In his CNN show Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain digs deep into the wildly diverse eats, politics, and cultures of global locales. Parts Unknown also features local—and sometimes just plain awesome—musical talent. Remember when Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri wrote and recorded a special EP for the Punjab episode? That was dope.

Now, you can listen to the music of Parts Unknown on sparepartsunknown.tumblr.com, a music-related companion to the show.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Bourdain talks about how he picks tunes for the show,

“‘I look out the window at some pretty outrageous landscapes these days—so a lot of the music that I’m loading into my phone is designed to go along with whatever location we’re shooting at, Bourdain said about his deliberate scoring choices. ‘Often, I’ll request a style of music that specifically emulates certain songs or previous film soundtracks to get a certain kind of feel. For example, Depeche Mode  sounds good when you’re barreling through a rice paddy on a lawnmower, or when you’re in the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. We try to do it much the same way that you would score a movie, commissioning musicians rather than using tracks from a library.'”

It makes sense that the TV host and writer has loved and identified with music since his childhood, seeing that his father worked at Columbia records.

Go explore the Parts Unknown music Tumblr, and then listen to this track from Iran’s Kiosk, featured on the latest episode. “This is from Call A Cab, their latest, and one of the best albums of 2014, in any language,” writes Bourdain.

[via sparepartsunknown.tumblr.com]