Staring at a World Map with a bank-balance festively plumped by a student loan, you'd think making plans for the summer would be easy. But I didn't want to fork out for a holiday and dig down into the gloomy depths of an overdraft without real inspiration. Shelling out for over priced guide-books seemed likely, but for me another summer spent in familiar places, seemed inevitable.

A very long summer ahead with no commitments all too quickly evaporates into September rain before you can say Lonely Planet. But, as it turns out, inspiration can be found in the most unlikely places, and you can get excellent travel recommendations by immersing yourself in the culture by proxy. For me, it meant turning to music for inspiration.

The more I looked into it the more in made sense. Understanding music inspired by various countries, landscapes and cultures is an excellent source of inspiration and it seems to be a worthy way to access a culture and resolve to get over there and experience it first hand.

With this in mind I've put together a few places that are worth going to for their awesome music scenes.

Berlin

Beirut, a New York-based band, have an affinity for Eastern European music. Lead singer Zach Condon wrote a song about the Berlin landmark the Brandenburg Gate on “Gulag Orkestar”. It's an album firmly rooted in Eastern European tradition and culture. The sound and ideas lament the walls and barriers that have fallen whilst romanticising the culture and cities but still letting us know that while the trains in Berlin may never be late - that Eastern Europe still works on a different time-signature all together.

Don't think it's all art-students and black and white films projected onto the side of adjacent hotels. And although the two-German trance DJs I met at the Polish border were leaving the country in search of cigarettes and a cheaper party, they couldn't speak more highly of Berlin. Paul Van Dyke, legendary dance music DJ grew up in East Germany, and would undoubtedly recommend Berlin for it's 24-hour drinking and party-loving atmosphere will leave your ears ringing either in low-ceilinged churches to foreign indie-pop (Bang Bang Club) or in the decadent ballroom orgy descent into dance music (Insomnia).

Some say that Berlin's rebuilt architecture, big open squares and remnants of the wall make it a visual feast, but for those who want to take some time out from all that, and reflect on the sounds of the city with no distraction, nowhere could be better than the Unsicht-Bar. You'll eat in total darkness, but don't expect total silence.

Iceland

Iceland's sound is distinctively large, but this is most definitely not Scandinavian death-metal. In few places does the landscape reflect so strongly across a country's most successful musical talent. Sigur-Ros, the huge orchestral, post-rock, “Blue-Planet” soundtrackists have a sound indelibly stamped with Iceland's personality: a thriving nation isolated and stranded in the heart of the Atlantic.

The barren and deserted island is, through their music, translated into an almost mythical place with huge potential for energy: a living and breathing country. But don't think that makes it backward - along with its Scandanavian counterparts, it's one of the most developed countries in the world. Temperate in the summer with a landscape of waterfalls, geothermic spas and water-cut lava fields, Iceland is as unique as the sounds it inspires. And the locals are proud of every international league table they top and very eager to know your first impression. But if you want to do more than contemplate, and soak it in, you also always take a Jeep out on the Glaciers or enjoy rafting down rivers with the same force as some of the glacial-sized musical movements in Sigur Ros' back catalogue.

The newest country in the world, and one only populated as recently as 848AD is fresh and a trip to the center of the largest deserts in Europe (most of the island) will situate a lot of the music in it's rightful place. See the music in its traditional context with bands doing their best mannequin impressions in the shop window at 12 Tonar record shop in the capital. Or trot down to Café Rosenberg for inexpensive cuisine, live music and a litte something that seems to sum up Iceland: a sense of home.

Brazil

For those looking to splash out, Brazil with it's latin rhythm, beaches, rainforests, psychedelic history, and modernist architecture is a great place to spend your summer. Kate Bush wrote a song called Brazil and, in a song later covered by The Arcade Fire, she sings of nights, morning, longing and just knowing that she'd always go back. “Return I will. To old Brazil”: lyrics that represent a nostalgia for a very specific time in old Brazil. One of the most vibrant parts in Brazilian culture was in 1968 with the Tropicalia movement, a collection of psychedelic poetics, musicians and activists whose ideas are today brought together in the compilation “Tropicalia – A Revolution in Sound”. The Tropicalia movement was a celebration and coming together of a bright Technicolor culture, re-defining what it meant to be Brazilian in the grips of a military dictatorship trying to strangle the life out such a strong populus. But Brazil's musical heritage isn't all in the past as CSS, an indie/electro band from São Paulo and the current darlings of the UK music press, can testify.

This sort of vibe is evident if you visit Brazil any time soon. Head to São Paulo in June for Fashion Week and see colourful vibrancy even in Brazil's winter, in an increasingly safe environment, much more so than Rio De Janiero. Staying in the Watermelon-shaped Hotel Unique gives you a nightclub, rooftop swimming pool and 360 degree panorama. If you don't fancy splashing out, stay one of the lodges down the road for as little as £20 a night.

Brazilian food, despite rampant cosmopolitanism, is cheap and you can get an authentic taste of Brazil without having to pay-out for the specialties. Big breakfast and extravagant lunches are recommended. If you want to leave Sao Paulo or Rio's beaches head up to North East Brazil for local country music nights held on ranches just before the full-moon: a riot of dancing, accordion and warmth.

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