Mokoomba is a Zimbabwean band with a sound that never fails to surprise me. There really is nothing quite like them coming out of Southern Africa. Indeed, when I first heard of Mokoomba—whose manager, Marcus Gora, I met in 2013 at the SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin (Gora also runs the First Floor Gallery in Harare, Zimbabwe, with his wife Valerie Kabov)—I expected it made the kind music that's being pumped out of Johannesburg and Lagos, the capitals of Africa's new, mainstream hiphop-inspired sound. But when I listened to their second album, Rising Tide, I was surprised to hear no bubbly and booming hiphop beats, rapping that sounded raw, and singing that drew from many soulful sources: black America, black South Africa, the streets of Brazzaville.

Mokoomba is doing new things in their own way, and this is why in their tunes you can catch beats that rocked dance halls in '70s-era Kingston, Jamaica intersecting with vocals possessing the grit and urgency of the Chitlin Circuit in the '60s. With all of these musical intersections in mind, it's not surprising to learn that Mokoomba is from a border town, Victoria Falls. Borders are never passive. They are always acting on the way their inhabitants see and feel and express the world.

Mokoomba plays the Royal Room on Thursday, May 25. Check out a few videos of the band below, including their full performance at the KEXP studios in 2014.