Here's that PBBB "East West" track, I think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaV-S5ivX3EHaven't listened to it all yet, but I'm hearing only Western instruments so far. You will hear tamburas in lots of Western pop though. Most fetchingly I think in the intro to "Tomorrow Never Knows", which has that modal, non-harmonic feel, itself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a3NcwfOBzQHas a Mixolydian melody (root, major third, fifth, flatted seventh). Would correspond to khammaj thaat.
Also, whenever you hear "sitar" on pop recordings, 9 times out of 10 it is actually a nifty little Coral Electric Sitar, which was a Silvertone/Danelectro style instrument that had a normal guitar neck and tuning and a "buzz bridge" which approximates a guitar sound. See Steely Dan's "Do it again" for a good example. These are neat instruments but nothing like a sitar, which despite being a fretted stringed instrument, is so shockingly unlike a guitar to play I almost swore it off the first time I played one. But they lured me back...