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With their second album, este mundo (this world), Rupa & the April Fishes hold up a carnival mirror to life and present a warped, humorous, and occasionally disquieting reflection. Sequestered beneath Rupa's infectious and captivating melodies are thought-provoking themes that address life, love, art, death, and the real and artificial divisions that keep us apart. The San Francisco-based musical agitators are specialists in crossing borders and building bridges, and on este mundo, due out on October 27th, they effortlessly blur the boundaries of genre and geography to create a sound Time Out has called "global agit-pop."

Este mundo was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios by engineer and sound wizard Oz Fritz, who is best known for his work with Tom Waits (Mule Variations). Guests include rapper Boots Riley of The Coup, along with  some of the Bay Area's best musical talents including Tin Hat's trumpeter Ara Anderon and Serbian slap bassist Djordje Stijepovic. Rupa & the April Fishes blend an alternative pop attitude with international spices, mixing in elements of Gypsy swing, Colombian cumbia, French chanson and Indian ragas. According to lead singer Rupa, "este mundo is a collection of sounds and songs highlighting life's accidental beauty and surging joy as well as their inexorable partner: human suffering."

Rupa speaks from experience. A practicing doctor by day and a professional musician by night, she's regularly exposed to life's fragility, resilience, and randomness. Her unique perspective informs much of her deeply personal and poetic compositions. Good Morning America recently sat down with Rupa to discuss the delicate balance of being a musician on the rise with her day job at a San Francisco hospital where she's confronted regularly with death and suffering.

Rupa & the April Fishes had been one of the Bay Area music scene's best-kept secrets until they were introduced to the world in 2008 with the global release of their debut album eXtraOrdinary rendition. Praised by the media and ever-expanding legions of devoted fans, the album reached the top spot on the iTunes charts in its category on numerous occasions, was featured on multiple National Public Radio programs and described as "one of the hottest emerging acts" by Time Out Chicago.
       
"My life has become a strange balance between being home and taking care of patients who are very much a part of San Francisco, and then traveling around the world making music," says Rupa. "There's something nomadic about what we're doing, making and breaking ideas as we generate a particular sound in the process."

Over the past year, the group has brought their infectious live show to adoring crowds at NY's Central Park SummerStage, the Montreal Jazz Festival, San Francisco's OutsideLands, and Stern Grove festivals, not to mention dozens of Europe's most prestigious festivals and venues. With a sound that embodies the creative energy and open-mindedness of their San Francisco home, the group has shared the stage with Michael Franti & Spearhead, Devotchka, and Los Lobos among others, and has been compared to Gogol Bordello, Manu Chao, Beirut, and other boundary-breaking genre-straddlers.

Based on her personal history, it's no wonder Rupa has a wandering spirit. Before she was born, Rupa's parents moved to California from India and eventually settled in Southern France. After growing up in the wildly divergent worlds of California, India, and France, Rupa returned to the Bay Area to study medicine, while maintaining her devotion to music. "I always struggled with trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, music or medicine." In the end, Rupa decided to pursue both of her passions, carefully balancing her career as a doctor with her life as a touring and recording artist.

After playing solo in Bay Area clubs and cafes, Rupa assembled a band that includes a roster of some of the Bay Area's most talented young musicians. The name the April Fishes was inspired by the French term les poissons d'avril, which is related to the English term April Fools. In France on the first of April, people stick little paper fishes on unsuspecting people's backs. "The origin of that is disputed, Rupa explains, "but one of the stories is that when a French king changed to the Roman calendar from the pagan calendar that was in wide use at the time some people who still wanted to celebrate the New Year in April. So these are the people who would give the fishes, the April fish, to celebrate the beginning of the New Year. During the Bush Administration, we were feeling like April fishes— people who don't believe the reality that's handed to them by some higher order, but instead insist on the reality they perceive in front of them. It's a political and social commentary."