India, March 15 -- Among my current fistful of earworms are songs from an early-1980s band named So-Do, whose music is a fabulous stew of post-punk, funk and dub music; a stew that emanated from reggae in the 1960s and '70s.

The Japanese band's unpredictably syncopated rhythms, singer and songwriter Hideshi Akuta's vocal style (he sings mainly in Japanese but with a smattering of English), and the overall catchiness of the music are infectious.

So-Do wasn't an algorithmic recommendation. It popped up on Bandcamp, on a human-curated list of new releases. I doubt I would have discovered this gem any other way. Even at their peak, they weren't known outside Japan.

The So-Do album featured on the Bandcamp list, Studio Works '83-'85, holds ...