NASHVILLE // the coolest city that you’ve never visited

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One thing is for sure about Nashville: it certainly knows how to make good on the title “Music City”. Not only is it the hometown of honky-tonks, delicious barbeque, and mucho Country musicians playing hole-in-the-wall bars at all hours of the day, but the independent/alternative/basement rock music scene is absolutely exploding, making Nashville the city with the highest concentration of the music industry in the U.S.  That’s right. More than THREE TIMES L.A. So if your inner desire of becoming that brooding bassist in a basement band decides to become a reality, you might find yourself amongst the whisky-swiggin’ elite in the dirty south.

There’s a reason why musicians from all genres are moving here: besides rattlesnakes, the biggest problem is avoiding the humidity in August and figuring out which music venue to visit on any given night. Sounds pretty perfect.  But if you have to ask why the city’s so impressive, you certainly haven’t been there. You have to experience this place for it to move you. Nashville is chock full of creative types attracted to cheap rent, local pride, and a laid-back lifestyle that allows you to mill around drinking 40’s with buddies on your couch one minute to crowd surfing at the house show around the block the next. There is something happening in this town that you won’t learn from any cheesy Taylor Swift song: the creative energy and thriving community of artists and entrepreneurs are threatening to make this city the best-place-to-live-in-your-twenties, and I don’t hate it.

Whether you’re bursting your eardrums and hanging from the rafters at Glenn Danzig’s house on a Friday night or whisking through a 6-pack of PBR while catching a show at local Third Man Records, the Music City is so much more than jean-jacket clad country artists and rhinestone cowboy boots atop a mechanical bull. This playlist is packed with Nashville heavyweights that will get you drumming on your thighs and bobbing your head to the beat whenever you throw it on. This city’s got soul, people, so check it below.

Pujol – Black Rabbit
Cheap Time – Glitter & Gold
Natural Child – Dogbite
Turbo Fruits – Trouble
Tristen – Baby Drugs
D. Watusi – High School Baby
JEFF the Brotherhood – Heavy Damage
Denney & the Jets – Sunny-Lane
Useless Eaters – Neon Light
Heavy Cream – Watusi
Diarrhea Planet – Ice Age
The Ettes – No Home
Jeffrey Novak – Queen of Moods
Hans Condor – Conversations
Cy Barkley – Blackout