Sure, there are plenty of other large cities that love a good tribute band, but we know that North Texas as a region is mad about seeing tribute bands for everyone from T-Swift to Luke Combs to AC/DC. If you count yourself a fan of tribute acts, you can't go wrong with a trip to Lava Cantina. It's a venue that believes in tribute bands the way those bands believe in the artists they pay tribute to.

In March incumbent state Sen. Nathan Johnson, somewhat surprisingly, faced a Democratic challenger for his seat, and a formidable one at that. State Rep. Victoria Neave Criado ran a solid campaign, but failed to convince voters she could serve in the Senate role better than Johnson had since being elected in 2018. Since that time, Johnson has been a relatively lonely blue dot in the ever-reddening legislative chambers of Austin, yet he's been impressively productive while sticking to his guns (so to speak) on important matters including public school funding, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and gun safety.

When all the best indie cinemas are falling like dominos, it is heartening to learn that film fanatics still exist in Dallas. The adorable microcinema Spacy is keeping the faith alive in Oak Cliff with an array of uber-niche options that skew heavily toward international, queer and art films. With just 35 folding seats, the space in the basement of a former wax paper factory is intimate; founder Tony Nguyen always anticipated it as a spot to do private screenings and parties along with ongoing programming, including private dinners, pop-up shops and perfume swaps. But if you want to catch an early Fassbinder or Nobuhiko Ôbayashi masterwork, it'll cost you a very affordable $10. BYO popcorn, but sweet treats are available.

Perhaps the most unusual artistic "space" in town is the 2017 Volvo belonging to Dallas Contemporary deputy director Lucia Arbery Simek. As she travels from work to home, the vehicle serves as its own exhibition space in the guise of her project, The Fuel Commission. Because the new-to-her car arrived without a fuel door, Simek and her husband (Scottish curator and writer Gavin Morrison) called on their creative colleagues to create a work of art to display on the vehicle's temporary door. Featuring work by Brandon Thompson, Keer Tanchak and Joel Murray to date, each small, round painting lives on the car until it is time to rotate it out. Priced to question the value systems of art, each piece will sell for the price of a full tank of gas times 10 (plus a new door). Works so far have ranged from $470 to $509, a fraction of the featured artists' typical values. So, keep your eyes peeled on their Instagram to snag a piece for your own.

Behind an unassuming frosted glass storefront on Jefferson Boulevard lies a wonderland of contemporary art aimed at serious collectors. We're talking about Tureen, perhaps the most ambitious project-based gallery to land in our artistically inclined city. Owners Cody Fitzsimmons and Chris Scott intentionally kept the former pharmacy's original tin ceiling and tile floors to set off minimalist and modern works of sculpture, paper and painting to their best advantage. Created by underrepresented talents from early career to museum quality, Tureen's stable has already become a favorite of collectors and art advisers in the know. The gallery's shows are always engaging and thought-provoking, and its location outside the Design District assures that visitors who turn up do so because they really get the spot's sophisticated mix of work.

Outsider art is defined as work "made by self-taught individuals, who are untutored in the traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art world." With this philosophy in mind, Ephemeral Space has spent the last year showing a mixed bag of work that ranges from flyers saved from the legendary Starck Club to pencil drawings made in Huntsville Prison and lots more. The beauty of this quirky concept isn't just in its off-the-beaten-path philosophy; it also lies in its affordability. The goods may be odd, but the odds are there is an original work in your budget (even under $100) just waiting to be purchased, making it the ideal gallery for creative weirdos looking to enliven a bare wall.

Country music might be one of — if not the — most big-tent musical genres in existence. Even so, a case could be made for the value in pushing boundaries, and few country-inclined artists are doing more to put their own indelible stamp on country music than singer-songwriter Angel White. The fifth-generation Texan, who hails from Cleburne, has burst out of the gate with his debut EP, Ghost of the West Volume I, which juxtaposes the slow-burn menace of "Outlaw" with the soaring, heavy rotation-ready "If You're Gonna Leave." It marks White as a musician more than comfortable with blurring the boundaries between tradition and innovation.

The news involving DART is almost always a bummer — delays, incidents, construction, suburbs looking to cut funding, what have you — so it was downright refreshing earlier this year when the area's public transit outfit announced a partnership with Dallas legend Erykah Badu on the eve of her 53rd birthday. Wrapped Badu buses and trains, bearing eye-catching designs created by Badu in partnership with DART, pop up here and there on city streets and will continue to do so through the end of 2024. They're a vivid, visual reminder of the value of fostering creativity within a city hard-wired for cold, hard capitalism.

If you've never spent an afternoon rifling through record store bins, only to discover a lost gem tucked away in the stacks, it's possible The Number One Set and Sound might not elicit a delighted gasp of recognition. Local music legends Danny Balis and Jeff "Skin" Wade, who previously joined forces in the late, great Bastards of Soul, re-teamed after that group's dissolution in the wake of Chadwick Murray's untimely death to create Silver Skylarks, a dynamic duo whose sinuous, striking jams evoke the thrill of crate-digging, and whose debut LP delivers one bona-fide, vintage-flavored banger after another.

The Venn diagram of financial planners and singer-songwriters who've turned heads at the Kerrville Folk Festival probably overlaps minutely. Like, maybe there's just one artist like that in all of Dallas? Enter Stephanie Sammons, a Dallas-based financial planner who has also crafted one of the year's most arresting, beautiful records with her debut, Time and Evolution. Produced by folk eminence Mary Bragg, the LP traces Sammons' own reckoning with being queer in a conservative, Southern religious culture. Far from a furious screed, it is instead tender, inquisitive and often profoundly moving. These songs are the textbook definition of soulful.