The beloved tropical dive opened in 2012 in Wynwood, Miami’s arts district, just before the area took off as a nightlife destination. Today its graffiti-scrawled stage is a go-to for touring indie and punk bands and rough-edged electronic music. (Recent headliners include Black Midi, Soccer Mommy, and Machine Girl.) With mismatched furniture, bocce ball courts, late-night pizza slices, and a giant outdoor tiki bar, it’s basically a hipster Margaritaville.

Named for a brigantine ship that carried spirits and ammunition during the Revolutionary War, the nautical bar is a bit of a novelty on Calle Ocho, the historic main street of Miami’s Cuban enclave. With its maritime decor and colonial-era cocktails, it’s not the first place you might check for punk and hardcore shows, but since 2017 it’s been Little Havana’s home for all things dark and loud, plus New Wave dance parties and Sunday night karaoke.

The Japanese-style listening lounge, which opened in Wynwood in 2021, is the first of its kind in Miami: a dimly lit, 50-seat audiophile’s dream, with a custom analog sound system that puts pounding club speakers to shame and a selection of 10,000 vinyl records played by resident and guest DJs. The records come from the personal collection of veteran DJ Rich Medina, Dante’s music director and master of ceremonies, who occasionally hops on the mic to contextualize a favorite track.

The low-key dance club, hidden in plain sight on an unassuming corner of the Little Haiti neighborhood, feels worlds away from the excesses of Miami’s bottle service circuit. Word of the welcoming (if mysterious) underground space has spread among the city’s ravers, beach goths, and fellow denizens of the night, who come for hard techno, darkwave, and industrial sets that usually last ’til 5 a.m. It’s also one of the city’s rare 18-and-up venues.

The first floor of downtown hot spot Club Space was gutted and reborn in 2017 as The Ground, an answer to the city’s void of midsized concert venues. Since then, the high-end warehouse has showcased rising rap, R&B, and rock stars just before they hit the big time (SZA sold out the place in 2017, and a pre-Euphoria Dominic Fike performed in 2019), plus the occasional set by electronic artists from DJ Stingray to DJ Python.

Forget everything you thought you knew about South Beach at this Española Way dive, where beers are cheap, chandeliers are repurposed from old liquor bottles, and a life-size Bruce Lee statue hangs over the bar. A counterpoint to the area’s touristy clubs and hotels, it’s designed in homage to the No Wave scene of late-’70s NYC, with a small stage that’s hosted punk bands, emo nights, and drag shows since 2012.

Since 2012, this Midtown mainstay has been Miami’s always-bustling hub for wine, cheese, and live jazz, with a sprawling garden patio inspired by cozy New Orleans backyard cafés. Enter through the foyer of the onetime family home, grab a heaping charcuterie plate, and sit beneath the stars while local musicians play jazz, blues, and folk seven nights a week.

Local lore has it that this downtown basement space once housed Al Capone’s bootlegging operations during Prohibition. As of spring 2023, it’s the latest incarnation of Miami’s sound room trend, with a top-notch speaker system, an unobtrusive DJ booth, and the mood-lit vibe of a ’70s disco parlor. Programming caters to cool kids with old souls, with an emphasis on soulful house and disco: recent guest DJs include James Murphy, Eli Escobar, and Jellybean Benitez.

The most left-field programming in Miami goes down at this homey arts studio and performance space just off I-95. The post-pandemic years have been tough on the city’s smaller indie venues, but The Bridge remains a DIY stalwart, sponsoring in-house studio residencies in addition to its events: experimental psych-rock and underground rap showcases, piano-hacking workshops, or sunset jam sessions in the community garden.