“Todah raba” to my homie Dan Skidmore-Hess for turning me on to Fool’s Gold, a band out of L.A. whose sound sensation combines African beats with Hebrew lyrics.

NPR describes their perky guitar style and tight syncopation as a mash-up of Congolese rhumba, Malian desert blues and 70s Ethiopian soul — which is quite a feat, considering those are three very disparate regions on a rather enormous continent.

I’m thinking I hear what might have transpired if African master Ali Fakar Touré and Talking Heads’ vocalist David Byrne and Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen smoked a bunch of weed together and jammed to an epic California sunset. As it is, the video for “Surprise Hotel” by Fool’s Gold is definitely channeling some kind of wackiness. Not sure how girls in bikinis, old men with snorkels and an iguana fit in, but love it:

What a gift to enter 2010 not feeling like freak for being a Jewish girl who gets hyper at the sound of a djembe! (DS-K, remember when you thanked me for introducing you to the kosher soul of Blue Fringe? We are good now, dude.)

Want to read about the origins of the Jewish African Cowgirl? Read my essay “Tribal Confusion,” originally published in 2007.