We use gauge/gravity duality to write down an effective low energy holographic theory of charge density waves. We consider a simple gravity model which breaks translations spontaneously in the dual field theory in a homogeneous manner, capturing the low energy dynamics of phonons coupled to conserved currents. We first focus on the leading two-derivative action, which leads to excited states with nonzero strain. We show that including subleading quartic derivative terms leads to dynamical instabilities of AdS(2) translation invariant states and to stable phases breaking translations spontaneously. We compute analytically the real part of the electric conductivity. The model allows to construct Lifshitz-like hyperscaling violating quantum critical ground states breaking translations spontaneously. At these critical points, the real part of the dc conductivity can be metallic or insulating.