Best live music venues in Williamsburg

Williamsburg is Brooklyn's live-music spine, and the best of it is walking distance off Bedford and the Lorimer L stop. Baby's All Right is the neighborhood's marquee small room — the place buzz bands play before they blow up — while Union Pool, with its taco truck and back patio, has been the cool-kid clubhouse for two decades. For something smaller and stranger, Pete's Candy Store's narrow train-car room and Black Flamingo's downstairs dance floor cover the spectrum, with Brooklyn Bowl and National Sawdust handling bigger and more adventurous bookings nearby. This is a curated list, weighted toward the intimate and the last-minute over the corporate. It updates as Williamsburg's rooms shift bookings, open, and close — because the neighborhood never stops changing.