World Cafe on KRVS

David Wax Museum fuses traditional Mexican and American folk music into what the band calls "Mexo-Americana" — a style that's lively and unique. David Wax and Suz Slezak, the band's core members, met in Boston in 2007. After spending summers working with Quakers in rural Mexico, Wax spent a graduate fellowship year studying the local music of Mexico.

Singer-songwriter Iris DeMent was born the youngest child of a large Pentecostal family in rural Arkansas, and later moved to Southern California. DeMent grew up listening to traditional country and gospel music, which influenced her roots-folk sound, though she was 25 when she wrote her first song. It would take another five years for her to release her first album, Infamous Angel.

The Lighthouse and the Whaler is a band based in Cleveland, Ohio, though its name actually references the waters off the coast of Massachusetts. Originally, Michael LoPresti and Aaron Smith were its only members, and the very first song they wrote together, "The Field Song," ended up picked for a Paste sampler CD.

It took a while, but the London folk-rock band Mumford & Sons broke big with its 2009 debut album, Sigh No More. The album combines the raspy vocals of singer Marcus Mumford with lush harmonies and rootsy instrumentation on tracks that range from soothing to rocking.

All month, World Cafe invites listeners to discover the music of Havana, Cuba, with the series Sense of Place.