Dunya (LP)

Dunya, the title of Mustafa's masterfully crafted and breathtakingly tender full-length debut on Jagjaguwar, roughly translates from Arabic to "the world in all its flaws." It's a lofty subject for a young songwriter, but as with every theme at the heart of the Sudanese-Canadian artist's work-from religious devotion to childhood trauma, gang violence to romantic intimacy-he approaches it through a personal lens. Blending genres and moods, weaving novelistic details into instantly memorable folksongs, he has crafted a record that feels like a series of personal breakthroughs, arriving one after the other.