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1. Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba “Ba Power”
2. Anna & Elizabeth “The Invisible Comes to Us”
3. Three Legged Race “Persuasive Barrier”

Bandcamp is an online music platform used largely by independent artists and record labels to stream songs and sell merchandise. It’s also a vibrant virtual community teeming with interesting sounds just waiting to be discovered. Each week, I’ll highlight three releases available on the site that are well worth your time and attention. If you find something you dig, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.

Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba, “Ba Power”

The ngoni is a stringed instrument that is widely used during special occasions and ceremonies in the West African country of Mali. There are different kinds of ngoni, but the one Bassekou Kouyaté plays looks like a small paddle with strings, and it makes a sharp, silvery sound that you can hear all over this glorious album of Afro-rock jams. “Ba Power” documents a world-class player and his terrific band as they pump out nine songs that skillfully walk the line between traditional African music and modern aesthetics. If mesmerizing African melodies appeal to you but you’re not sure where to get them, this would be an excellent place to start.

Anna & Elizabeth

“The Invisible Comes to Us”

Folk music is not just a guy with an acoustic guitar or grainy clips of Pete Seeger playing “If I Had a Hammer.” Folk music is not a thing of the past. In fact, folk music is alive and evolving into new shapes every day. If you don’t believe me, just check out the albums of Anna & Elizabeth, a duo from Virginia and Vermont, who take very old songs and breathe new life into them. Their second album, 2018’s “The Invisible Comes to Us,” spills over with homespun harmonies, minimalist arrangements, ancient tales and unexpected sounds. It’s a stunning listen and a shining example of folk music done right.

Three Legged Race, “Persuasive Barrier”

Kentuckian Robert Beatty is best known as the visual artist behind psychedelic album covers for big names like Tame Impala, Kesha, Real Estate and Thee Oh Sees, and a bunch of smaller names, too. But he also has a long history of making interesting music, both with noise band Hair Police and his solo project, Three Legged Race. The latter has several releases on Bandcamp, but the most substantial is Beatty’s 2012 full-length “Persuasive Barrier,” an oddly subdued landscape of muted beats, undulating tones, creepy robot voices, drippy glitch and lots of open space. It sounds like something weird and electronic happening under a heavy blanket. In other words, it rules.