There was an admission implicit in the title of the South African trio Beatenberg’s 2022 EP On the way to Beatenberg: The group had yet to arrive at a sound. Over 19 minutes, they experimented with baroque guitar and Auto-Tune; they flirted with EDM uplift and Balearic haze. But Beatenberg’s core remained indie pop, refracted through guitarist and lead singer Matthew Field’s lifelong love of maskandi and mbaqanga. Their serene rumbas can make the group’s music feel out of time, not just in America (where a dusty mental shelf might…
