Most tracks were composed by lead singer Wade Schuman; the album also includes arrangements of traditional songs.

Tuvan folk band Huun-Huur-Tu feature on three tracks with their characteristic throat singing.

[1] Reviewing the album for Allmusic, Jeff Tamarkin gave it four stars out of a possible five, and termed it a "stunning debut".

[2] Tamarkin praised the band for successfully fusing styles as disparate as blues, jazz, klezmer, calypso, and ska into "music that sounds at once ageless and primeval, authentically indigenous and inexplicably otherworldly, familiar and unlike anything else.

"[2] He also praised the group for making "listener-friendly music" that doesn't "require a degree in ethnomusicology to enjoy".