A Dose of the Delta Blues

The rock gods must have been smiling when, in 2001, Zac and Ethan Holtzman met Chhom Nimol at a nightclub in Long Beach, California's Little Phnom Penh. Inspired by cassette tapes Ethan hauled home from a backpacking trip to Southeast Asia, the American brothers had set about the rather quixotic task of forming a Khmer rock band. They'd learned a couple of songs, but needed a singer to give them life. They found one that day in Chhom, a recent émigré with a knockout voice. Dengue Fever, that singular, strange and wonderful ensemble, was born.

Four years later, Dengue Fever traveled to Cambodia with their friend John Pirozzi, an American director and cinematographer. That trip is the subject of Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, a DVD/CD combination released in April. Shot in 10 days with a small, Cambodian crew, Sleepwalking is part travelogue, part ode, and an affectionate look at a band that straddles worlds. In front of a Cambodian crowd, Chhom, who spoke almost no English when she met the Holtzmans, is finally at home, while the band tags along, alien, outsized and bumbling good-naturedly through the simmering streets of Phnom Penh. Cross-cultural dimensions like this set the film apart from typically slick rock-doc fare.

Yet Sleepwalking is still very much a rock 'n' roll story. Dengue Fever's music is a revival of a unique genre of psychedelic pop that thrived, briefly, in 1960s Cambodia. With U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Vietnam, Khmer musicians like Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea mixed the trippy rock of Armed Forces Radio with Khmer melodies, creating spaced-out, original tunes. It all ended, tragically, with the rise of Pol Pot; many of the country's musicians were persecuted or killed by the Khmer Rouge. (See the all-TIME 100 albums.)

Sleepwalking is dedicated to the memory of those fallen artists, and is a more than fitting tribute. Dengue Fever meet and jam with musicians who have attempted to preserve the Khmer sound. Together, in the film's lively finale, they perform a concert in a Phnom Penh slum. The crowd initially gawks but ends up being thoroughly charmed. Spend a summer afternoon listening to Dengue Fever's bittersweet corpus and you just might be won over yourself.

Read "Cruise in Style along Laos' Mekong River."

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.