West Sweden

The whole idea for this blog started almost six months ago from the notion that Sweden has so many amazing bands and only a fraction of them are known outside the country. My first post on Sweden is on West Sweden, one of the eight National areas of Sweden. The biggest city in this area, and one of the most active cities in Swedish music is Gothenburg. The artistic range is broad. There is everything from electro, to folk, to indie rock and ambient. Sweden is also known for its metal music, but since I'm not a fan of that genre, I decided to leave bands in that genre out. What strikes me in this list, is that there doesn't seem to be a distinctive Gothenburg sound. All the artists are really different, but still amazingly good. Here's the playlist: West Sweden

Alberta

In Canada, most of the bands that I know, come from Quebec, British Columbia or Ontario. These lists will be quite large, so I'm saving them for later and take on Alberta as the first Canadian province in this blog. I only knew one band from this province before work on this blog, but I found a lot more. As with the rest of Canada, Alberta also has quite good indie pop/rock bands, some electronic stuff, some folk stuff and of course those few oddities here and there. Most of the bands and artists on this list are from Alberta's two biggest cities, Calgary and Edmonton. Many of the most successful bands have moved to different parts of Canada or to US since they've gained popularity, but I'm listing bands here that have been founded in Alberta. This proofed to be an interesting list of music and a great playlist: Alberta, CA

Mali

I wanted to get out of the Euro-American music environment, so here's my first post from Africa. Mali is probably one of the easiest countries to cover, because they have a rich music culture with recognisable sound and many famous musicians. Malian music is mostly about artists. There are not as many bands there. The musical styles range from funky afrobeat to hypnotic traditional songs played with kora and masterful blues guitar sounds. Malian musicians use a lot of guitar in their music and there are some absolutely brilliant guitar players. Rhythm has a large role to play in most of these songs, but still they have great melodies as well. The melodies follow, for most parts, similar patterns as western pop music, but sometimes difference is audible. I haven't really familiarised myself properly with African music before this blog, so this is a chance for me as well to learn more. I don't really know that much about Mali as a country, but its music has reached my ears on many occasions, so this seems natural choice to begin my journey into African music. Here's the playlist: Mali

Belgium

One of the great things about making a blog like this is that I get to study new music from areas, that I haven't really known much about. I knew only few Belgian bands before starting this blog, but those bands were great, so I was curious to find if there's more brilliant music coming from the country. And sure enough, Belgium's music scene is really interesting with great melodic indie bands using innovative sounds and styles. A lot of the bands sound similar, but in this case, it's only a good thing. I have mainly included songs sung in English, since listening to Flemish is a bit weird. At least I could not enjoy the music with Flemish lyrics that much. It seems that the Flemish parts of Belgium are more active in making music than the French areas, but fortunately they make a lot of great English music. Here's the playlist for Belgium: Belgium

Alaska

After two quite massive lists of Helsinki and London, I wanted to plunge into something a lot smaller. Before embarking on this blog project, I had only ever heard of one Alaskan artist, but I was delightedly surprised to find a bunch of great beginning artists from this American state with a population of just under 750,000. As one could easily assume, Alaska has some great bearded folk artists in their lumberjack outfits. However, there's much more than that. There are some really great and modern-sounding indie bands and artists as well. It seems that Anchorage is one of those cities that have given birth to artistic environment and innovative new music. The playlist is just over one hour long, so it's a good choice for listening, when you don't have too much time on your hands. There are also a couple of bands that are not on Spotify, which I present first. Here's the link to the playlist: Alaska, US

London

This blog-post is about bands and artists from London. I currently live here and I find good new bands all the time. London has probably more bands and artists than any other city in the world, so making a comprehensive list is quite impossible. For me at least, London is the capital of rock and pop music. I aim to list all the good artists and bands that I can think of without using too much time in thinking whether I've included everyone. It's still going to be a long list and filled with great music. Since my past with music has had so much to do with Britpop, I'll start with that and try to move on keeping similar genres together. Many bands have moved to London once they've become more successful, but I aim to list only bands that have been founded here and artists that have started their musical career in London. But before I move on to the bands on the list, I'll handle those few bands that cannot be (at least yet) found on Spotify. Heres the link to the Spotify list: London