Congolese seven-piece band Mbongwana Star's debut full-length album, From Kinshasa, was released earlier this year on World Circuit Records, distributed in North America by Nonesuch Records, to critical acclaim. It's now landed on year's best lists from the New York Times, NPR Music, SPIN, Mojo, Uncut, and Q.

"Bouncy Congolese pop—music that has been a blissful contrast to decades of dictatorships and civil wars—gets a startling, spooky makeover on From Kinshasa," writes the New York Times music critic Jon Parales in placing the album on his list, noting "the band’s crisp, versatile rhythm section, its angular guitar and its lived-in voices ..." Read more at nytimes.com.

The album's " ambition extends to the astral plane, absorbing post-punk, funk and techno along the way," writes NPR's Otis Hart on NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2015 list. "The journey feels nothing short of a new world order. Don't hesitate to hitch your wagon to Mbongwana Star." Read more and see the complete list, which also includes Rhiannon Giddens's Tomorrow Is My Turn, at npr.org.

"There's always a fear that music under the 'world' umbrella—an icky term in itself—will be fetishized out of some kind of imagined nostalgia for a mythologized paradise that's war-torn and fraught in actuality," writes SPIN's Dan Weiss in that magazine's list of the 50 Best Albums of 2015. "So rather than taking it back to the good ol' days of when the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the dictatorship of Zaire, let's celebrate how this indescribable seven-piece resists pigeonholing from even the most burnt Burning Man guest as anything but the future." Read more and see that complete list at spin.com.

To pick up a copy of From Kinshasa in the US, head to iTunes or the Nonesuch Store, where it's currently 15% off as part of the store's ongoing anniversary sale.