Have you looked into Nimrod? It is different from Python in that it embraces some concepts that Python rejects (e.g., AST macros, which are actually quite brilliant in Nimrod) but it's the most pythonic programming language that I know of that compiles to native code.
Thank you for recommending Nimrod; I'd never really looked into it before. Nimrod looks like a cute little language, but it seems to lack a staple of many other languages: support for the '\t' character in indentation.
