Tse Tse Fly

Wall of Voodoo were Los Angeles's strangest contribution to the post-punk era — Stan Ridgway's voice a kind of California-gothic drawl, the synthesizers creating a sound that was simultaneously cinematic and unsettling, the visual aesthetic combining Western Americana with industrial decay.

Tse Tse Fly, from Call of the West (1982), demonstrates the band's most characteristic qualities: a groove with the quality of something moving through heat, Ridgway's voice maintaining deadpan throughout imagery of African insects and desert landscapes.

Wall of Voodoo are best known for "Mexican Radio" (also from Call of the West), but the full album is more rewarding than the single — a record that creates a genuinely distinct sense of place.