You will come across ancient chants on this album, chants performed in the centuries-old language of Gurmukhi, but you'll also pick up traces of Sada Sat's childhood and college years, a time when she was immersed in bluegrass and folk. One day in the studio she leaned over to her producer, Jeremy Toback, and said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I really like country music." Voila, Toback brought in roots-music virtuoso Greg Leisz, who has graced recordings by everyone from Joni Mitchell to Lucinda Williams to Wilco, and who can be heard here exploring the astral plane on banjo, pedal steel, lap steel, and dobro. Twang chant? Hey, maybe the Ganges and the Mississippi aren't so far apart, after all.

Sada Sat Kaur's voice has a way of simultaneously calming and invigorating you, and that makes sense, too. "One thing that I love about Kundalini yoga chants is that they're not only bhakti energy, which is devotional, but they're shakti, which is the power," she says. "They're juicy. They're gutsy." Doing yoga is not necessarily a prerequisite for appreciating it, either. For anyone who feels bombarded by noise, stress, and distraction at every corner-and isn't that the habitual plight of the 21st-century humanoid?-the chants of Sada Sat Kaur act as something of a sonic antidote.