Though they're at a geographic and cultural remove from the traditional Canadian industry epicentres of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, the Atlantic provinces have long been one of the country’s most fertile regions for independent music. The unique combination of isolation, thrifty ingenuity, and East Coast hospitality has historically bred a dense ecosystem of self-starter artists and community-oriented labels that frequently catapult music from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland into the national spotlight. Mixing classic tunes from across the decades with a few recent ones as well, some of the artists you’ll hear on this playlist are clearly drawing from the Gaelic, Acadian, Black, and Indigenous folk traditions that have shaped Eastern Canadian culture as profoundly as lobster and donairs. And other noisier outfits hearken back to that golden era in the ’90s when Halifax was being hyped as the next Seattle.