Who: Staten Island-based instrumental funk twelve-piece the Budos Band, who are currently on the road with labelmates Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings. After ten years of lineup changes and style shifts, the current Band came together at a jam session hosted by Brooklyn Afrobeat legends Antibalas.

Sounds Like: Parliament infused with a bit more Funkadelic. Their second album, simply titled The Budos Band II, finds the outfit diving headfirst into dark atmospheres of Fela Kuti and Ethopian funk, while having a rollicking party on the way down.

Three Things You Should Know:

1. The band's influences are eclectic, to say the least. In one breath baritone saxophonist Jared Tankel big-ups Ethopian funk god Mulatu Astatke ("It's pretty wild stuff, and it's definitely been a big influence of ours"), and in the next he's listing off inspirations like "Heavy metal, death metal. The drummer and bass player love that stuff. Black Sabbath, Slayer," he says, "Even though you can't hear that easily in our sound, a lot of our songs have a dark sound — a lot of that comes from the metal aesthetic."

2. The strangest concert the band ever played? A yoga studio in tiny Ashland, Oregon. "There were yoga mats and pilates balls. We started playing, and granted it was a Monday night in the middle of February, but there were ten to fifteen people there. And people started doing yoga in the middle of the set," Tankel reminisces, "That was one of those times we started playing new stuff, we're like 'Fuck it, let's use this as rehearsal.' "

3. The Budos Band briefly entertained the idea of adding a singer. "One of the incarnations did have a vocalist. They were Dirt Rifle and the Bullets," Tankel admits, "Since that, and the turn toward Afro-funk, we've thought of maybe having a vocalist once, and the thought passed really quickly. At this point, we're never going to have one," he adds. "We have enough people as it is trying to make music together."

Get It: The Budos Band II hit stores in August, and is available on iTunes. Check out the band's electric live performance opening for Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, or at their special Hanukah concert at New York's Webster Hall on December 8th. Click the above video to watch the band's "The Volcano Song," from their first album.

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