Put a brimful of Asha on your iPod ride! The Asha Bhosle who's name-checked by the Brit band Cornershop and is renown as the voice of Bollywood, has released a CD with San Francisco's best arbiters of new music tastes, the Kronos Quartet.

Kronos has always sought to redefine classical chamber music from Viennese ladies doing the minuet to encompass all types of sonic sensation -- from contemporary pieces by Philip Glass and John Adams to Hendrix covers, Latin jazz, Argentinean tangoes, and African world music. Their latest record, , features string quartet arrangements of songs from Bollywood films.

Bollywood films are famous for their extended musical numbers, many of which were written by Asha Bhosle's late husband, R.D. Burman and performed by Ms. Bhosle, to be lip-synched by famous actresses in the actual movie. Burman and Bhosle are said to have sold more records than Elvis and the Beatles combined. And the album's a lot of fun! It's basically a Burman/Bhosle greatest hits collection -- Kronos and their posse of world musicians basically fade into the background and Bhosle lets it fly (check out the audio samples).

The tunes are insanely catchy and -- well, we don't approve of listening to world music to feel exotic, but we did find ourselves hankering for something with cardamom as we listened through. Kronos will be performing with Asha Bhosle on September 22 and 23 at the Yerba Buena Center. We hope they'll synch up some movies with the songs!

You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood