I'm in Stockholm, Sweden for a couple of days on a guitar gig, and am having a blast. I had no idea of the fact that Sweden exports the third-most amount of music (behind the U.S. and the U.K.) until today, but it's not surprising when you consider the amount of talent that has come from this country of merely nine million: ABBA, Refused, Ace of Base, Fireside, Entombed, The Cardigans, pop guru Max Martin, the list goes on and on.

My personal favorite: the recently defunct Hellacopters. The band started as an Entombed/Backyard Babies side project and turned into one of the best and most-loved garage revival acts, though that pigeonholing does a disservice to their complex Blue Cheer meets Cheap Trick romp. The Hellacopters weren't doing anything new, but I can't think of anyone in the past decade-and-a-half that did frill-free hard rock as consistently well as these guys.