Iowa, Kentucky, and Minnesota as the sleeper cool states scans with me. I've never been to Iowa, but I can see it having some pockets -- the literary history of the Iowa Writer's Workshop is pretty impressive. Louisville and the Cincy areas of Kentucky are pretty legit (stay safe Louisville! Cops are straight shooting people there.), and Minneapolis (stay safe Minny!), where I have a couple of friends, is pretty cool and active, even in February, which was the one time I was there in person. Anyway, I was impressed, but I'm not sure I could do a whole winter there, even my friends struggle with it.
NC relatively dope though, just gotta crush our legislature and not replace them with too many neo-liberal developer types.