Thievery Corporation

Thievery Corporation are Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, who met in the summer of 1995 at Washington, DC's Eighteenth Street Lounge over a shared love of dub, bossa nova, jazz and reggae, and launched their own ESL Music label the following year. Their sound is a globe-spanning downtempo blend of those influences with a rotating cast of vocalists. The Richest Man in Babylon (2002), their third album, reached number 2 on the US Dance Albums chart and sold 25,000 US copies in its first month; 'Omid', whose title means 'hope' in Persian, is sung by LouLou Ghelichkhani, one of their longest-running collaborators. The duo later earned a Grammy nomination for Radio Retaliation (2008), in the Best Recording Package category, and opened for Paul McCartney in 2009. Their later albums include Midnight Ragas (2025) and A Sky So Close (2026).

From the notes for Episode 04 · fact-checked Sep 23, 2026.