This is as close as it gets to Vegas on Hollywood Boulevard. In 2017, LA’s own festival behemoth Insomniac turned this cavernous warehouse into a center for sensory overload, with smoke cannons, LED ceiling panels, and festival-caliber strobes. The big-budget bookings cater to the Electric Daisy Carnival set, leaning on commercial dance acts like deadmau5 and Afrojack, but purists can still get lucky: Chicago house pioneer Derrick Carter recently coheadlined with underground darling Jayda G.

Considering its cartoonishly touristy location, a stone’s throw from the Walk of Fame and TCL Chinese Theatre, Sound makes a respectable attempt at a serious club experience. Drawing in dance-floor-tested icons like DJ Harvey and Paul Woolford, the space is somewhere between a sleek bottle-service nightclub and an industrial underground party. The name isn’t hyperbole: A first-of-its-kind sound system lines the walls, which are paneled in repurposed wood from Frank Sinatra’s old estate.

This labyrinthine club—the epicenter for queer Black nightlife in the ’70s and ’80s—was the subject of an Ava DuVernay-released documentary in 2016. Centered around the spot’s longtime owner, activist Jewel Thais-Williams, the film depicts how the West Adams party spot became a safe haven similar to New York’s Paradise Garage, a place where queer people of color were free to be themselves. It’s under new ownership but still hosts queer parties, including the revered A Club Called Rhonda.

The Arts District has swiftly become one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods, peppered with artisanal ice cream shops, plant stores, and a Soho House. But this bunker remains off the beaten path, surrounded by trash heaps and industrial rubble. Still, as any seasoned LA raver knows, the best parties are often in the worst parts of town. Locals continue to flock here for goth raves and minimal techno burners, some of which feature heavy-hitting labels like Kompakt and Ostgut Ton.

You can trace Silver Lake’s trendy transformation through the phases of its most venerable nightclub. Opened nearly a century ago as an American Legion hall, Los Globos has been home to one of the city’s first openly gay clubs, the site of the US’s first legal rave, and a Mexican bar where rollicking bandas entertained working-class Angelenos. Since 2011, it has catered to the eclectic crowds of the post-gentrified neighborhood, booking Afrobeats blowouts, 2000s parties, and male strip shows.

In 2018, this East Hollywood hot spot—formerly a dingy bikini bar and alleged practice space for Guns N’ Roses—was transformed into a stylish cocktail lounge, hotel, and recording studio. With a consistently excellent calendar of jazz, psych rock, and electronic music, it’s popular among DJs and in-the-know thirtysomethings who gather for its loose, late-night scene of funk and disco parties. Leon Bridges, who lived in the hotel for a time, named his 2021 album Gold-Diggers Sound.

Most people venture over to this Chinatown den for its themed dance nights: The Smiths vs. Joy Division, for example, or ’80s vs. ’90s. But longtime Angelenos know it for BOOMBOX and Backbeat, two underground parties keeping the spirit of Low End Theory alive (the now-defunct event series established LA as a hotbed for instrumental hip-hop and jazz fusion). In 2019, the producer Ras G, known as the Sun Ra of the LA beat scene, played his final set here before crossing into the next dimension.

This indoor-outdoor oasis could win the award for LA’s best slept-on venue. With food trucks, string lights, and a luxurious open-air courtyard, partnered with an industrial live-music club, it feels like someone plucked a bar out of Austin, Texas, and planted it in the Arts District. In addition to hosting themed dance parties (’80s bangers, 2000s hip-hop), it has served as the jewel-box hideaway for two of the city’s best rap showcases of the last half-decade: PayDay LA and Don’t Come to LA.

Housed in the former site of the LA Stock Exchange, this sprawling four-story nightclub in the heart of Downtown hosts rip-roaring house, techno, and EDM just about every weekend. Headliners usually veer toward the commercial end of the dance music spectrum (think: Kaskade, deadmau5, Charlotte de Witte), but the club’s owners are careful to represent homegrown talent, too, collaborating with local collectives like Space Yacht and Desert Hearts on blowout gatherings for their most loyal fans.

El Cid can feel like a 16th-century Andalusian alcazar with secret dungeons, winding pathways, and intoxicating sangria. Famed for its weekly flamenco shows, the Spanish restaurant turned nightlife fortress on Sunset Boulevard once hosted the essential hip-hop club night The Root Down. In recent years, it’s packed thousands into its sprawling compound for Favela Worldwide, a dance party series featuring Afrobeat, dancehall, reggaetón, and more. A reminder that old Silver Lake still exists.