This unassuming brick building on St. Bernard is the city’s best dive-bar club, with a string-lit backyard space where you might stumble into Goth Prom or the monthly queer rave Gimme a Reason (if you wander into the latter, try to score one of the T-shirts with the tagline “South Louisiana Dangerous Gay Nightclub Music”). While there are “official business hours,” you can take the sunlight as your cue to keep dancing a few more hours.

The city’s newest hot spot on the Uptown edge of the Warehouse District opened in 2022 on the simple premise that NOLA has enough dives and hotel bars. Whether you agree with that or not, The Rabbit Hole’s no hole-in-the-wall and routinely books top-notch, diverse dance music—bounce, house, New Wave, garage, and more. Come for the indoor/outdoor stages, cheap-ish cocktails, and the sense that you’re breaking in a soon-to-be-legendary venue.

There’s no logical explanation as to why this Marigny neighborhood staple, which shares a block with a food co-op and a climbing gym, gets as busy as it does. But that’s the charm of the 3,800-square-foot performance space where some of the city’s best DIY events go down. Among them: nightlife whisperer Pleasure Savior’s renowned reggaetón party, astrological raves, and any number of “you heard it here first” rap shows.

Over the past half-century, this Bywater neighborhood dive has been home to a grocery store, a boxing gym, and an art gallery (remnants of which can be seen in the patio bathtubs and eclectic folk art), but these days, it’s a trusty hangout with good music, cheap drinks, and a friendly dance floor. Although it occasionally hosts live bands, Saturn is best known as a dive club for drag shows, disco and cumbia nights, and the ever-popular Mod Dance Party fueled by ’60s vinyl.

This two-story French Quarter venue is perhaps best known as a popular rock bar, but after midnight it transforms into a destination for dance and electronic music (think: drum ’n’ bass, house, and tunneling techno). The cavernous space has all the hallmarks of an underground party: brick, bunkerlike archways, neon signs shaped like vampire fangs, and a windowless bar and dance floor that makes it easy to lose track of time.

This late-night institution in the Lower Garden District is more than just a dingy hole-in-the-wall, though it’s certainly that too. Past the bottles of well liquor, toy cats, and Daffy Duck ephemera, the dive’s debauchery is soundtracked by sets from some of New Orleans’ most in-demand DJs. Nights start late and end around dawn, and revolve around the music: bounce, jungle, hip-hop, house.

Hotel bars are a huge part of the local jazz scene, and the Ace Hotel’s Three Keys extends that tradition to nightlife. Hiding in plain sight behind the stylish lobby bar, it feels too proper for a speakeasy, too cozy to be a club, but in any case, it’s a solid spot to hear local DJs, celebrated jazz bands, and touring acts, including occasional pop-up shows from Dam-Funk or BADBADNOTGOOD.

The venues at the heart of New Orleans’ DIY scene tend to be abandoned Navy yards or decrepit Family Dollar stores, but for a fixed and legal address, there’s always Okay Bar. The St. Claude gem is full of surprises: surprise shows, surprisingly good food, random couches in surprisingly big rooms you might describe as “Lynchian.” Lineups cover the bases from bounce to bluegrass to drum ’n’ bass to the Heat Wave Ball, the annual dance party that only plays records from 1957 to 1974.