Dengue Fever falls uncomfortably somewhere between Gogol Bordello and Beirut in the musical spectrum: unlike Gogol Bordello, this really isn't traditional music, nor are the band members--mostly indie rockers from LA--as diverse or international as Eugene Hutz's crew; but unlike Beirut, Zach Condon's Balkan brass band, Dengue Fever does have itself anchored to its musical pedigree: lead singer Chhom Nimol. Nimol comes from a family of successful Cambodian wedding singers. She moved to the US in 2000 at age 21, and wound up in Long Beach, California where her sister already lived.

The band's genesis, though, was due to an American: Ethan Holtzman. Holtzman traveled to Cambodia in 1997 and discovered Sixties Cambodian music, a macaroni of American rock imitation and local color that was a strange byproduct of the US presence in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, Cambodian pop music died (along with a substantial portion of the population). Holtzman, an organ player, and his guitar playing brother Zac, formed Dengue Fever to resuscitate (or just plain rip off) the odd mix of surf and garage rock that was popular in Cambodia forty years earlier. So they needed a Cambodian singer.

Enter Chhom Nimol. After blowing away the competition (they apparently walked out of the audition when they saw her), she found herself deeply engrossed in the world of American indie rock, about as far from Cambodian wedding singing as you can get. In 2002, she was detained for a lapsed green card while recording the band's debut album, and after three weeks of detainment wound up spending months singing at a Cambodian lounge called the Dragon House to make money to pay off her legal fees. The ordeal lent the name to the band's second album, Escape from the Dragon House. Now, Dengue Fever's touring in support of their third release, Venus on Earth, which they're supporting at Neumo's this Saturday, along with Black Moth Super Rainbow and FCS.

Dengue Fever @ Neumos // Sat. 3/22 // $12 adv // Doors at 8pm, 21+

Photo by Kevin Estrada