If music is the universal language, the Cambodian pop group Dengue Fever expresses itself fluently.

This Los Angeles-based sextet plays a unique brew of Cambodian pop that's filtered through a Western indie-rock prism.

Dengue Fever might just be the only band in the United States that has serious cred on the streets of Phnom Penh. That's because the band has stayed true to the Cambodian style of rock. And its synthesis of East meets West has also earned a loyal following on L.A. streets.

On Saturday, Dengue Fever will perform a free concert on the quad as part of the UC Davis' Summerfest concert series.

Dengue Fever was founded by native Angeleno Zac Holtzman in 2001.

"It was a mad-scientist experiment," said Holtzman via phone from his Echo Park home.

Holtzman and his brother Ethan, who plays organ and accordion for the band, became big fans of Cambodian music during a 1990s trip to that Southeast Asian nation.

"There was such good music coming out of Cambodia that we decided that it would be a good idea to start a band based on that music," said Zac Holtzman. "It felt like the right thing to do."

The band's first show, at the Los Angeles club Spaceland in 2001, sealed it.

"People just went crazy," said Holtzman.

But this isn't a band that uses another culture's music to spice up its sets. Dengue Fever takes its Cambodian influences seriously. Many of its songs are sung in Khmer, the official language of Cambodia.

"We're not traditionalists," said Senon Williams, bassist with the band. "Musically, we're seeking something new."

Like Holtzman, Williams also traveled to Southeast Asia, first to Thailand and then Cambodia. And like Holtzman, the music he encountered made a big impact on him.

Initially, Williams assumed he would hear some kitschy pop music. But what he found was a tasty reinvention of American music. The music ranged from the 1960s through the 1980s. And what he found most interesting is how it managed to remain true to its Cambodian roots.

For Williams, the mix proved provocative.

"The music, it sounded like it was caked with reverb and distortion and then mixed with the sound of traditional Cambodian instruments," said Williams. "They had created something completely new. I was pretty stunned."

Some of that cross- pollination can be blamed on history. Cambodian music was deeply influenced in the 1960s by the Vietnam War. When U.S. soldiers came to South Vietnam, so did American rock music in the form of broadcasts from the Armed Forces Radio Network. Those broadcasts filtered into neighboring Cambodia.

Soon songwriters like Sinn Sisamouth and the legendary Cambodian singer Ros Serey Sothea were kicking out traditional-style Cambodian music backed by a psychedelic surf rock sound.

American rock music has been a curious musical influence ever since.

For the sake of authenticity, when forming the band, frontman Holtzman decided the lead singer should be a Cambodian.

But finding such a singer would not be easy. The Holtzman brothers started frequenting the many Cambodian clubs in Long Beach, home to the largest community of Cambodians outside of Cambodia.

"We were the only non-Cambodians in these clubs," said Holtzman, who sports a long beard.

The two set up auditions within the Cambodian community. Initially, it proved a fruitless and frustrating experience. None of the six singers who auditioned was suitable to front a band.

"We began to think that this was a crazy and stupid idea," said Williams. "

But on the second day of auditions, Chhom Nimol stepped up the microphone.

"She washed away the competition," he said. "It was like hearing a songbird."

Nimol, who hails from Battambong, the westernmost province of Cambodia, was as authentic a singer as Dengue Fever would find. She had been in the United States for only several months, she spoke absolutely no English, and at the time was concerned only with singing in the insular Cambodian banquet clubs of Long Beach and nothing more.

"When we approached her about being in the band, we hummed a few bars of one of our songs and asked if she was interested, and she said yes," said Holtzman.

But Nimol's family was suspicious, and it took several phone calls to get a commitment from the singer.

Today, Dengue Fever tours internationally and has a cult following. A seminal moment in the band's history came when it toured Cambodia in 2005. That tour is chronicled in the highly regarded documentary "Sleepwalking Through the Mekong" by director John Pirozzi and shown at many film festivals.

The documentary follows the band throughout Cambodia as well as the poignant homecoming for Nimol, who returned to Cambodia for the first time since she had left the country in 1991.

That tour made the band instant celebrities in Cambodia. The newfound notoriety came by way of an appearance on Cambodian television.

Before the band played, Holtzman got the feeling that everyone expected Dengue Fever to be nothing more than a Western cover band boasting a Cambodian singer. After the band played a 12-song set, Holtzman said, everyone was surprised that Dengue Fever had stayed true to certain Cambodian musical roots.

The band was an instant hit, and its music was played four times a day for three weeks on the national network CTN, Holtzman said.

The band's fan base continues to grow in the United States and Europe. It recently returned from a European tour, and the day after it performs in Davis, Dengue Fever will open for Grace Jones at the Hollywood Bowl.

And it will soon go into the recording studio for its fifth recording to follow its just- released digital-only four-track EP, "Radio Dance Floor."

Call arts critic Edward Ortiz at (916) 321-1071.