@@kelechi_77What type? I listen to Mac demarco, Yot club, Housecall, No vacation, and a bit of Eric Maia with some of them having less than 1 million streams. I’d say in a way the Smiths are indie a bit
@@VoteforPedro2004 The Smiths were part of the first wave of indie pop music in the 1980s that came out of record labels such as Rough Trade, Fast Forward and Rhino Records to name a few, they formed a distribution chain called the "Cartel".
@bilbobaggins9488. It’s modern meaning means Guitar PoP music, so shitty awful bands like early Coldplay, Oasis, The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Imagine Dragons, R.E.M, The Killers, The Pixies, Kings Of Leon, The Black Keys. All that boring shit.
@@TheDeathOrange not really the middle ground between accessible and inaccessible is genres like art rock. Indie just meant you were on an independent label and that you had a certain diy approach to making your music, you werent that competent at instruments, sometimes more lo-fi recording, your songs felt more like sketches, laconic, childlike... etc.
context collapse. it's the same as what happened with "alt"/"alternative" in the 1990s. the thing that strikes me is that "indie" used to connotate a very "guitars on a four track or GTFO" and today it's moved on to become very melodic with layered synth/effect lines, almost entirely because of DAW-based recording and specialized guitar pedals. What I'd really like to know, though, is when did the actual inflection happen?
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers I think guitar effects and such were used way back in the 80's but I guess that would be more like dream pop or C86 stuff which at the time, might have been considered alternative. Those older bands influenced the new and 4-track wasn't a requirement anymore. Although I always associated 4 track with the term lo-fi before it suffered it's own context collapse. It's why it's always important to distinguish genres into two camps: Style or umbrella. Style invented by the musicians. Umbrella by the journalists.
@@earthculture9462 yeah, those were basic single-serve analog effects (distortion, reverb, flange). What I'm alluding to are digital effects pedals (like Strymon's) that came out sometime in the 2000's-2010's. Studio-level effects in very small boxes. I think when those started coming out, you had a lot of bands able to get those sounds that Brian Eno and Martin Hannett had.
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers Ahhh gotcha. I guess just using effects at all was enough to be an influence. Think most bands around that time (late 00's - 10's) were looking to expand the overall sound as well veering into New Wave, electronic, psychedelia and folk so I think that might explain why they didn't care about being pure though some bands obviously stayed the course.
When music started being uploaded directly online in the late 2000s and the barrier for production was zero. It was easier to categorize music when it was physically sorted by CDs,tapes, records.
@NOCTACRY. That’s what it originally meant, but now it means Guitar PoP music. So shit like early Coldplay, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Kings Of Leon, Arcade Fire, R.E.M, The Pixies, The Black Keys, Imagine Dragons, The Killers, The White Stripes, Mumford & Sons. All that awful shit.
honestly, at best it only ever described the bands relation to the music industry and then basically that wasnt true almost immediately. Didnt stop me from being proudly into indie music in highschool 15 years ago, but youth i guess
I've always suspected this. the general definition is music that comes from independent labels and takes influence from indie rock and indie folk, but that barely tells me anything about what the musical characteristics or conventions are.
ehhh not really. we're in a streaming era. music is now finally accessible so there are no definitive fine line to distinguish the mainstream and the underground. some say it depends on the monthly listeners numbers. some say that if u make music that are different from the mainstream (trap/old school boom bap, etc), u can be considered as underground. like i said, it has become a subjective matter.
You can have alternative pop music, its pop that exists outside the mainstream, “pop” like indie nd alternative has a transmuted meaning it no longer means “popular music” but a typical 2 minute melodic verse-chorus structure kind of song
I'm not a musician, but I think the term alternative pop fits well with that type of music that isn't mainstream, but has a pop base, like alt z, I honestly think alt pop would be a good substitute term
I have always thought of alt pop as more of an alternative approach to pop by being more influenced to non-pop sources or styles that isn't mainstream like alt rock & electronic music
Having Tame Impala on the thumbnail reminded me of something, I love his laid back guitar and synth vibe, but I can’t even tell anyone I like his music because they’ll immediately assume I get all my songs from TikTok, and app I hate and don’t even use
Dont even get how Tame Impala are even indie, they came from the Australian neo-psychedelia scene. They have no real correlation with the typical “indie rock” sound. Its neo-psych
@@kelechi_77yeah their more neo-psychedelia, never even thought of them as “indie” I’d say smashing pumpkins is more indie than them and they were more inspired by shoegaze lol
It used to mean D.I.Y. then that off-kilter style began to be associated with the sound which in turn made it a reason to sell that sound, sign indie bands to major labels with higher production and still call it indie. (Modest mouse being a good example) Alternative went through a similar path, just at different times, both becoming umbrella terms just meaning not mainstream instead of pointing to specific styles. My rule is that the sound has to be different enough to not be played on 90's top 40 radio but not so different that it veers into avant garde territory and away from it's pop/rock song structures.
If somebody says indie as a noun, like "I like indie music" I'm not gonna know what they're talking about. But if they say it as an adjective like indie rock or indie folk, I know exactly what they mean.
In the first example you give it's still an adjective, it's just the noun being modified is "Music" instead of "Rock" or "Folk". When I say it I generally mean, "I like basically all genres with "Indie" in the name", Lol. Indie Rock, Indie Folk, Indie Pop, Indietronica, All named applied to stuff I tend to enjoy
@@rateeightx Good point. Becomes an umbrella genre in that regard rather than a specific style. So it's not precise but it does point in a certain direction which can be useful.
When I tell people I listen to indie music, I basically mean just one music artist I listen is indie and it’s my favorite. But my favorite indie artist is Good Kid
Indie was what happened to us teenagers of the late 2000s to early 2010s when we grew out of emo and started shopping at Urban Outfitters. There is a distinct sound of a subgenre of rock that took off in the early 2000s to 2010s that was indie tho like you can’t listen to a band like Interpol and merely call them “alternative rock”. For that time, they were indie much like The Drums or Passion Pit was indie and indie they shall all remain. 😢
whenever i use the term indie, i do have a certain sound in mind. ig its stuff like clairo, fay webster, hippo campus, wallows, still woozy, declan mckenna just to name a few. these guys r very popular obv. its more of the vibe for me ig😭 but when ppl ask me what i like listening to i just say indie/alt rock and hope it makes sense. (ngl i would include tame impala in that category- but i dont think i even know the diff b/w alt and indie rock)
it's so funny to think when i first heard the term i thought it was short for "individual", as in self-produced, somewhat unique and with lowkey aesthetics. the definition has quite literally morphed to fit both lol
When I think of the word "indie music" I think of artists/bands that are not from a big record labels and they are from small record labels or independent.
Great video. Fascinating when a business descriptor becomes a stylistic adjective. True indie music is pretty rare just like indie movies. The movie case can be interesting. Phantom Menace was a true indie movie and Pulp Fiction wasn’t!
hold up, live nightcore alex g goes kinda hard i think the prevalence/accessibility of DAWs and recording software [aka DA COMPUTER] def played a role in nullifying what 'indie' meant as far as labels, since those labels weren't as needed to release or record music anymore. i think that kinda got replaced with the DIY/bedroom pop scene of the early 2010s, which didn't last but the sound/style trickled out and contributed to a greater wave of self- or collective-releases. "indie" now definitely feels like a meaningless signifier that streaming services and labels will push onto music in order to make it have appeal for certain audiences; hopefully, this will encourage people to listen to truly independent music, but idk it's hard to be optimistic about that when someone wants more music like Glass Animals lol. of course, there are people genuinely curious about indie art, and hopefully they can navigate the shitshow of mislabeled bands and find the real stuff. good vid, appreciate the thoughtfulness!
There's a great Strong Bad Email way back that joked about the difference between "Independent films" (zero-budget pretensions art-house student projects) and "Indie films" (big-budget movies that ripped off the Juno aesthetic). I feel like it applies here too
The "deterioration of the meaning of indie" topic seems to resurface every few years as each new generation of artists reach wider audiences. 10 years ago, people were complaining about this, but it was directed at the successful 2000s alternative rock bands. Meanwhile Mac DeMarco and Tame Impala were still relatively small artist that were self-recording and getting categorized as indie. Ten years later here we are contemplating their indie status because their work is very popular now. This will probably just keep happening indefinitely because it's too ingrained in how we speak about music despite the drawbacks
Man, I HATE being asked the question "What kind of music do you like?" Because a quick random of my song library reveals this: Elliott Smith Violent Femmes Muse Tech N9ne Leonard Cohen Alice in Chains Gza the Genius Faith No More Brendon Small De La Soul The Offspring Queens of the Stoneage Amigo the Devil The Cure Lostdog Street Band Bauhaus A Wilhelm Scream Neutral Milk Hotel Interpol The Mars Volta Trampled By Turtles Tool Joy Division Acid Bath I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT KIND OF MUSIC I LIKE!
20 years ago the music business was dominated by "major labels". There were "independent labels" that were smaller, grassroot organizations who signed more niche bands. This all kinda went out the window with self-publishing and distribution channels like Soundcloud and Bandcamp
Indie was what all the emo kids got into post 2007, roughly 2008 - 2011, which led to the term "hipster". I was tricked into buying Hospice by The Antlers - what a mistake.
The extra tricky part is licensing deals between majors and indies, are they still considered independent even after said deal has ended (For example, metal label Earache entered a licensing deal with Columbia in the 90’s with 6 bands, that deal ended relatively quickly as it wasn’t very successful).
I think most of the artists you mentioned would have definitely been considered indie back in their day/when they were first starting off (Nirvana for example), but as time went on, they got more popular/bigger, and so (in my opinion) that term should no longer apply to them. Perhaps most of the confusion lies around people thinking of indie as an actual genre/mistaking it for alternative music. I personally consider indie artists to be artist who are not as popular/mainstream, DIY (mostly), having low budgets (if any) to create their music, and not being signed to a major record label.
When I say Indie, I refer to Indie as lesser known artists plus Independent. TVOD, Abandoned Pools, Reptilians for example are all Indie, as chances are slim you've heard of them. IDKHow also was for a while
I'm so glad there are others talking about this. I tried to give my opinion that indie shouldn't be a descriptor for music anymore on reddit (big mistake) , but of course, you're not really allowed to have opinions on reddit, and I just got told to "stop caring about genres".
Genres are very important and I hate this kind of anti-genre discourse where people say "stop caring about them they dont mean anything" lol they really do and musical taxonomy is necessary, its very interesting to pinpoint developments and scenes and watch them evolve. There needs to be more books and research on genres and genre theory, it's why I love that project someone at Harvard I think started where he tried to map out every genre on spotify
Also judging from the comments - it's a confusing term. In the UK indie music is used to define a style/genre of Alt Rock Pop, It's generally very commercially successful and doesn't ness have much to do with who they signed to. However, in the US it is stuck between maybe meaning independent Artist, or niche, and being a sound (as you say in this vid). There are artists like the Smiths that seem to be niche-indie cool for the US, but always seemed odd to me, as they are just one of the big (older) bands over here.
I've thought about this a lot and I've finally come to the conclusion that we need to let go of the origin word "independent" and let "indie" be its own thing. This has happened to a lot of words in the history of the english language, and already to genre terms like "underground" and "alt" so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I had this same thought the other day when thinking about how I got into “indie” music in high school over a decade ago. I thought, “Does indie even mean anything anymore??” So it’s pretty cool to see this video pop up 🤗
Small correction, Twin Fantasy (2011) was actually CSH's 6th album, with 1, 2, 3, 4, and My Back is Killing me Baby coming before it during 2010 and 2011. Also it was recorded in a car, hence the name Car Seat Headrest.
What's interesting is that "indie" and "alternative" used to refer to the same type of music back in the 80's (and you'll still see bands from that time like Pixies and R.E.M. described as both due to their influence on both "genres") before they started going off in different directions, with "alternative" being used to describe more mainstream grunge/britpop-influenced music while "indie" described more anti-grunge music and now, with the collapse of mainstream rock, they've kinda melded back together, at least in the rock world, and a lot of the "alt-rock" has been reassessed as just rock while the acutal "alternative" is being reclaimed as "indie"
This has nothing to do with the topic but I've never seen The Room other than the "I did not hit her!" scene so seeing that flower shop scene convinced me I need to watch this movie, that was comedy gold
If an artist is on an indie label, they're "real" indie. Doesn't matter if that label is distributed by a major, sooner or later every big indie label ends up striking a distribution with a major (just ask Merge). If a major owns outright or has a majority stake on a small label, that label ceases to be indie, IMO. The main difference between the two tends to be not only money and structure but also what's expected of the artist. Majors tend to meddle in the music (quite a lot, in fact), while most indies just trust the artist to hand them something that won't lose them too much money. A lot of indies also only sign artists to one-record deals, so they have complete freedom to leave the label whenever they want. There are exceptions; back in the '90s some majors would let certain artists hand in uncommercial records (probably for tax reasons, if you ask me), and I've heard of some indie labels that sign artists to onerous contracts. But generally that's the main difference between the two.
Spotify makes a lot of mistakes when it comes to typing artist genres, there's an artist I really like and he has a very good alternative base, as well as metal and a bit of EDM, when my most listened to at the end of the year arrived, I saw that Spotify categorized him as pop
When i hear "i like indie" i just interpreted as "i listen to music i found on the Internet thats extremely popular with my demographic but doesn't air on the radio"
i think it’s pretty easy to classify indie music. it’s broad and it’s vast. but obviously it means independent artist or studios who make music. but besides that it’s grown into its own form. a lot of indie derives from “jazz” jazzy chords and a scales. mixed with things such as rock, alternative, but now it’s all transformed. indie also means the music is problem really chill. probably heavy in chorus, spring reverb typically and uses a lot of lush and warm synth pads. so let’s see bands like The Smiths, LANY, Mac Demarco, Men I Trust, Del Water Gap, Boy Pablo, Puma Blue, King Krule, Yot Club, COIN, Hippo Campus, Stil Woozy, Wallows, Clairo, The Marias the list goes on right all kind of fit into this category of indie with their own spin. indie rock, indie alternative, indie punk, indie jazz, indie funk. Its bands that just make their own music at home in someone’s room or garage, in someone’s studio that isn’t owned by another company or record label. i think indie does mean something and i haven’t watched the video yet i plan on it im just at work but i think indie just means one obviously independent artist or who make their own music or in an independent without influence from big corporations. or also you can classify it as unrestricted rock rock jazz. yacht rock even could be just indie
Yeah, it’s pretty odd. I think indie serves as the same kind of term as pop. Well, indie describes independent artist pop I guess describes popular music. It seems to be more of a social idea than it is a description of what the music sounds like.
never liked using 'indie' as a descriptor for how an artist sounds, its way too vague and two artists that fall under the same "indie" paper definition can end up sounding nothing like each other. Magdalena Bay and The Magnetic Fields both classify as "indie pop", yet there's no similarities they share in terms of the sound of their music
From the UK here, I feel like indie really does depend on where you come from, indie is used to describe things like blur, kasabian, arctic monkeys, etc, a lot of Brit pop really, it's more a style rather than if they are attached to a major label, or maybe we're completely wrong 😂
around 1:55. I don't know why you would say that the same thing can *sorta* be said about indie music. i think the two are exactly the same in the sense that there is one person that goes to extreme lengths to carry out a creative vision exactly the way they see it in their mind, funded by themselves. yes it would help to have a crew and thousands of dollars of equipment, it would also help a musician to have the same thing, like a studio, a mixing guy, a vocals guy, different musicians, a symphony, and whatever else to be on the same level as the big guys. all you need to film a movie is an iphone, so if anything i would say the barrier of entry is lower for a movie than music, because you need to know how to actually play your instrument or whatever, but anyone can film a video. basically that scene felt very out of place in the video, and didn't really help me to understand indie music any more than i did before. I'm not mad or anything just felt like sharing, good video though.
The phrase "I listen to Indie" for me actually means "I feel awkward about my relationship with music, but if I explain it I ruin the flow of the conversation so I say a quick answer to keep the flow going."
Fascinating video. I admit, these particular "sounds" of rock I never really investigated... Very mainstream pop and rock throughout my adolescence... Until I recently rewatched Skins with the original soundtrack. Haven't done that for years due to them having to scrap most of it for stream-licensing. Holy crap there is so much music I've never paid attention to, and it's GOOD. It's really good alternative rock. Does it sit in a "alt/indie" playlist I've made? Yes. But the genres could easily be described as soft grunge, garage, new wave and post punk inspired, punk revival etc... A lot of them up and coming English bands in the late-00s / early-2010s, the music of "hipsters" and angsty teens with Tumblr blogs dedicated to mental illness. Majority of it is still indie because they never got signed to a major label. Some of it was definitely major produced. But overall, that show introduced (and is continuing to introduce) people to so many different bands that may have wildly diff genres but will still be called "indie" to the untrained ear. And that's the good thing about music. We just have to love and appreciate it :)
@@yeeterdeleter4101 I think it's because they were such a heavy influence on the indie "sound" Like proto Indie. Kind of like how Back Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were known as some heavy form of blues rock when they started but those early albums are now considered proto metal.
Well, indie music is any genre of music made by independent people who arent associated with a label, but everyone seems to have associated it with a sound rather than what it actually is
I never use the term. But I don't really talk about music much. My favorite band is NIN (Label: Interscope). If that's too mainstream for someone, it's their loss.
I remember Paste magazine wrote this cover page article saying ‘Indie is Dead’ way back in 2005 or something… essentially, they said the term was ‘dead’ because Indie had won! The internet and now streaming became the great equalizers, allowing small artists the same reach and potential influence as the major label groups.
Really big indie fan. But if you go to my likes song on Spotify, select indie. You’ll get so many different sounding song that while I all like do not flow together well. So it’s hard to pick indie song for a particular mood. Mean while I can pick rock and get exactly what I’m looking for
This should never have actually been a genre imo. It's always been too vague bc it refers to the status of an artist and not any particular part of the sound. I think alt folk would be a better turm(at least for what is typically seen as "indie"
I was once told that indie music which, I was listening to, was uncool because it was hippie music. That confused me because the music in question was fall out boy and I didn’t really see the connection to hippies… A year later pitch perfect 3 came out and any thoughts of hippies or uncool were gone.
I think it is the same that happens with “lofi” it is not a damn genre of music with some noise, it is a production style of music recorded at home with not the best equipment(low fidelity)
A lot of these terms can be silly, Garage-something, Nu-something, Future-something, Lofi-something, Art-something, Post-Something, Indie-Something. Add a Wave and a core and your away. Regarding lo-fi I used to see it used to describe stuff like the first Metronomy album a kind of loose meandering mix of guitar music with bits of electronica, then later lofi house with poor quality raw sound for artists like chaos in the CBD & mo kolours (though he's got a lot more going on then just house) then a couple years later the term was used for a lot of beatmusic (though their was def lofi-hiphop around before it was just not called that), but it then morphed into essentially the equivalent of Smooth Jazz.
El indie, en su estilo musical, se refiere a música que tiene un caracter modesto, donde la producción (sea o no independiente de un sello) busca un sonido no tan pulido a la música comercial. Un género donde la instrumental no es compleja o virtuosa como tal, donde el tipo de composición se centra más en el aspecto melódico y lírico. Si lo vemos solo desde la concepción genérica de "indie es musica independiente a un sello" estamos dejando lo que realmente caracteriza al indie, sobretodo el de los años 90. Entonces, considero que estamos llamando indie erroneamente a mucha música de hoy en día.
What I find funny is that technically I listen to a lot of "indie music" since most music I listen to isn't owned by a major record label. However, it isn't that indie sound. I listen to a lot of speedcore and other hardcore electronic music. So I could technically say "I listen to indie music" and actually be talking about M1dy and Coakira.
I'm slightly confused why you solidified nirvana as "technically indie" because they started out genuinely indie but are saying it's weird that billie eilish is considered indie when she too started out genuinely indie. I would also say she's just as influential in respect to the current sound of indie-pop music, similar to how you said nirvana was for indie-rock
7:08 There are only three major labels: Sony, Universal (UMG), and Warner (WMG). EMI was broken up in 2012 and each of the Big Three received part of it. Sony got EMI Publishing, and EMI's labels were supposed to go to UMG, but regulators forced EMI to sell some of the labels to WMG for antitrust interests. There are some confusing spots (e.g. EMI had to sell Parlophone to WMG, but Parlophone had to sell Apple, the Beatles' label, to UMG), but EMI no longer exists as an independent label. UMG owns the EMI name and reopened the label a few years ago. It's worth noting that music and labels can be owned and/or distributed by different companies in different regions. For instance, Swans' To Be Kind was released on Young God, Michael Gira's own independent label, in North America, but it was released on Mute worldwide. Mute is officially an independent label, but WMG owns its North American distribution and Bertelsmann (BMG) owns its worldwide distribution and back catalog. UMG owns Mute's worldwide physical distribution through a deal with BMG, but BMG is still the worldwide digital distributor. (Mute is one of the labels that was under EMI when it was broken up in 2012. BMG was formerly associated with Sony.) UMG, WMG, and Sony all operate in countries outside of North America, and other countries can have their own major labels in addition to the Big Three. Japan has Avex, Germany has BMG, etc.
I've gotten to the point where whenever somebody asks me what kind of music I listen to, I just take my phone out to show them my Spotify algorithm and listening history. Its easier that way.
I usually follow indie with another genre, like indie rock/indie pop if i’m describing it. I also imagine it’s basically just doing whatever the fuck you want without fitting into any one genre
What would vacations or cottonwood firing squad be considered, pop or something else? Like I genuinely don’t know what to call it other than indie at this point.
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im good
EXACTLY IT MEANS NOTHING. "I listen to a lot of indie" Yeah that tells me absolutely nothing
When people say this they mean soft indie pop or bedroom pop artists think mac demarco or men i trust
@@kelechi_77What type? I listen to Mac demarco, Yot club, Housecall, No vacation, and a bit of Eric Maia with some of them having less than 1 million streams. I’d say in a way the Smiths are indie a bit
@@VoteforPedro2004 The Smiths were part of the first wave of indie pop music in the 1980s that came out of record labels such as Rough Trade, Fast Forward and Rhino Records to name a few, they formed a distribution chain called the "Cartel".
I usually differentiate it by year like, "oh I'm listening to 90s indie rock
@bilbobaggins9488. It’s modern meaning means Guitar PoP music, so shitty awful bands like early Coldplay, Oasis, The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Imagine Dragons, R.E.M, The Killers, The Pixies, Kings Of Leon, The Black Keys.
All that boring shit.
When someone says "i listen to indie" i think they're trying to say "experimental" or "not very well known" music
no, indie is the middle ground between mainstream and experimental.
@@TheDeathOrange not really the middle ground between accessible and inaccessible is genres like art rock. Indie just meant you were on an independent label and that you had a certain diy approach to making your music, you werent that competent at instruments, sometimes more lo-fi recording, your songs felt more like sketches, laconic, childlike... etc.
context collapse. it's the same as what happened with "alt"/"alternative" in the 1990s. the thing that strikes me is that "indie" used to connotate a very "guitars on a four track or GTFO" and today it's moved on to become very melodic with layered synth/effect lines, almost entirely because of DAW-based recording and specialized guitar pedals. What I'd really like to know, though, is when did the actual inflection happen?
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers I think guitar effects and such were used way back in the 80's but I guess that would be more like dream pop or C86 stuff which at the time, might have been considered alternative.
Those older bands influenced the new and 4-track wasn't a requirement anymore.
Although I always associated 4 track with the term lo-fi before it suffered it's own context collapse.
It's why it's always important to distinguish genres into two camps: Style or umbrella.
Style invented by the musicians. Umbrella by the journalists.
I think it started with the recording of Is This Ir
@@earthculture9462 yeah, those were basic single-serve analog effects (distortion, reverb, flange). What I'm alluding to are digital effects pedals (like Strymon's) that came out sometime in the 2000's-2010's. Studio-level effects in very small boxes. I think when those started coming out, you had a lot of bands able to get those sounds that Brian Eno and Martin Hannett had.
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers Ahhh gotcha. I guess just using effects at all was enough to be an influence.
Think most bands around that time (late 00's - 10's) were looking to expand the overall sound as well veering into New Wave, electronic, psychedelia and folk so I think that might explain why they didn't care about being pure though some bands obviously stayed the course.
When music started being uploaded directly online in the late 2000s and the barrier for production was zero.
It was easier to categorize music when it was physically sorted by CDs,tapes, records.
i thought indie just meant the artist(s) aren't signed to a record label
That's what it used to mean lol
once upon a time!
@NOCTACRY. That’s what it originally meant, but now it means Guitar PoP music.
So shit like early Coldplay, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Kings Of Leon, Arcade Fire, R.E.M, The Pixies, The Black Keys, Imagine Dragons, The Killers, The White Stripes, Mumford & Sons.
All that awful shit.
@@NuMetalfan1996 erm, it is actually just "pixies" not "the pixies" ☝🤓
@@NuMetalfan1996Pixies shit and you're a fan of Nu Metal? 😅😅
Indie is more of a “vibe” nowadays lmao
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I don't think indie has ever been useful as a genre term.
honestly, at best it only ever described the bands relation to the music industry and then basically that wasnt true almost immediately.
Didnt stop me from being proudly into indie music in highschool 15 years ago, but youth i guess
I've always suspected this. the general definition is music that comes from independent labels and takes influence from indie rock and indie folk, but that barely tells me anything about what the musical characteristics or conventions are.
i thought it just meant small artists
"Underground" Hip-Hop has lost its meaning as well it seems.
ehhh not really. we're in a streaming era. music is now finally accessible so there are no definitive fine line to distinguish the mainstream and the underground. some say it depends on the monthly listeners numbers. some say that if u make music that are different from the mainstream (trap/old school boom bap, etc), u can be considered as underground. like i said, it has become a subjective matter.
How
I was gatekeeping Michael Jackson
@@blackthoughtbiggestfanfacts
@@Traay0good luck with that
same with alternative like how is alternative pop even exist it literally controdicts itself
You can have alternative pop music, its pop that exists outside the mainstream, “pop” like indie nd alternative has a transmuted meaning it no longer means “popular music” but a typical 2 minute melodic verse-chorus structure kind of song
I'm not a musician, but I think the term alternative pop fits well with that type of music that isn't mainstream, but has a pop base, like alt z, I honestly think alt pop would be a good substitute term
It stills makes sense like indie pop
I have always thought of alt pop as more of an alternative approach to pop by being more influenced to non-pop sources or styles that isn't mainstream like alt rock & electronic music
can you explain why you think it's contradictory?
I've always assumed that indie/underground just means not popular. This is fascinating if Glass Animals and Billie Eilish are considered indie lol
Yeah, this confuses me, too. I guess most people think of the term indie as a genre, which it isn’t
@@poppinmms8980 it is a genre, it describes a certain sound now and not independent like it used to
If their stuff is self produced I guess.
Billie eilish used to be just a producer and singer duo.
0:49 vocaloid jumpscare
thanks for the warning, I'll be on my toes- AAA
I saw it and was like OH WAIT HE DID VOCALOID and then discovered it’s not on RUclips today is a sad day
Lol get miku'd
Having Tame Impala on the thumbnail reminded me of something, I love his laid back guitar and synth vibe, but I can’t even tell anyone I like his music because they’ll immediately assume I get all my songs from TikTok, and app I hate and don’t even use
Dont even get how Tame Impala are even indie, they came from the Australian neo-psychedelia scene. They have no real correlation with the typical “indie rock” sound. Its neo-psych
@@kelechi_77because they’re a single independent artist, probably.
@@enternamehere2364 oh yeah they are an independent artist definitely but they dont make "indie rock" if that makes sense lol
@@kelechi_77yeah their more neo-psychedelia, never even thought of them as “indie” I’d say smashing pumpkins is more indie than them and they were more inspired by shoegaze lol
It used to mean D.I.Y. then that off-kilter style began to be associated with the sound which in turn made it a reason to sell that sound, sign indie bands to major labels with higher production and still call it indie. (Modest mouse being a good example)
Alternative went through a similar path, just at different times, both becoming umbrella terms just meaning not mainstream instead of pointing to specific styles.
My rule is that the sound has to be different enough to not be played on 90's top 40 radio but not so different that it veers into avant garde territory and away from it's pop/rock song structures.
If somebody says indie as a noun, like "I like indie music" I'm not gonna know what they're talking about.
But if they say it as an adjective like indie rock or indie folk, I know exactly what they mean.
In the first example you give it's still an adjective, it's just the noun being modified is "Music" instead of "Rock" or "Folk".
When I say it I generally mean, "I like basically all genres with "Indie" in the name", Lol. Indie Rock, Indie Folk, Indie Pop, Indietronica, All named applied to stuff I tend to enjoy
@@rateeightx Good point. Becomes an umbrella genre in that regard rather than a specific style. So it's not precise but it does point in a certain direction which can be useful.
When I tell people I listen to indie music, I basically mean just one music artist I listen is indie and it’s my favorite.
But my favorite indie artist is Good Kid
YES GOOD KID IS AMAZING I'M GOING TO A GOOD KID CONCERT IN 14 DAYS
@@OctoScribbles LUCKYYYY
@@lylaa ME AND MY MUM ARE SUPER BIG FANS
i'm also gonna go thrifting on that day :D
GOOD KID MENTIONED
Yesssss!!!!
As soon as I saw Tame Impala I clicked on the video
Same
i love tame impala
Random love there music BUT WHY IS IT SO LONG?
@@K4TSSS His* DID YOU KNOW HE'S JUST ONE GUY?!
I actually love that he does longer songs more often. Feels like a journey for each track
same😭😭😭😭
Indie was what happened to us teenagers of the late 2000s to early 2010s when we grew out of emo and started shopping at Urban Outfitters.
There is a distinct sound of a subgenre of rock that took off in the early 2000s to 2010s that was indie tho like you can’t listen to a band like Interpol and merely call them “alternative rock”. For that time, they were indie much like The Drums or Passion Pit was indie and indie they shall all remain. 😢
Haha… I can relate to this
whenever i use the term indie, i do have a certain sound in mind. ig its stuff like clairo, fay webster, hippo campus, wallows, still woozy, declan mckenna just to name a few. these guys r very popular obv. its more of the vibe for me ig😭 but when ppl ask me what i like listening to i just say indie/alt rock and hope it makes sense. (ngl i would include tame impala in that category- but i dont think i even know the diff b/w alt and indie rock)
01:18 BLUR ❤️
Real 😍
it's so funny to think when i first heard the term i thought it was short for "individual", as in self-produced, somewhat unique and with lowkey aesthetics. the definition has quite literally morphed to fit both lol
Paul McCartney's RAM is definitely my favorite indie album
RAM MENTIONED🔥🔥🔥
When I think of the word "indie music" I think of artists/bands that are not from a big record labels and they are from small record labels or independent.
Great video. Fascinating when a business descriptor becomes a stylistic adjective.
True indie music is pretty rare just like indie movies.
The movie case can be interesting.
Phantom Menace was a true indie movie and Pulp Fiction wasn’t!
Hold up I’m super fascinated by that last statement. Could you explain this in further detail? This sounds like a fucking amazing conversation
hold up, live nightcore alex g goes kinda hard
i think the prevalence/accessibility of DAWs and recording software [aka DA COMPUTER] def played a role in nullifying what 'indie' meant as far as labels, since those labels weren't as needed to release or record music anymore. i think that kinda got replaced with the DIY/bedroom pop scene of the early 2010s, which didn't last but the sound/style trickled out and contributed to a greater wave of self- or collective-releases.
"indie" now definitely feels like a meaningless signifier that streaming services and labels will push onto music in order to make it have appeal for certain audiences; hopefully, this will encourage people to listen to truly independent music, but idk it's hard to be optimistic about that when someone wants more music like Glass Animals lol. of course, there are people genuinely curious about indie art, and hopefully they can navigate the shitshow of mislabeled bands and find the real stuff. good vid, appreciate the thoughtfulness!
There's a great Strong Bad Email way back that joked about the difference between "Independent films" (zero-budget pretensions art-house student projects) and "Indie films" (big-budget movies that ripped off the Juno aesthetic). I feel like it applies here too
The "deterioration of the meaning of indie" topic seems to resurface every few years as each new generation of artists reach wider audiences. 10 years ago, people were complaining about this, but it was directed at the successful 2000s alternative rock bands. Meanwhile Mac DeMarco and Tame Impala were still relatively small artist that were self-recording and getting categorized as indie. Ten years later here we are contemplating their indie status because their work is very popular now.
This will probably just keep happening indefinitely because it's too ingrained in how we speak about music despite the drawbacks
The other day, I was at the bank and I heard "Blister in the Sun" by Violent Femmes over the radio.
Man, I HATE being asked the question "What kind of music do you like?" Because a quick random of my song library reveals this:
Elliott Smith
Violent Femmes
Muse
Tech N9ne
Leonard Cohen
Alice in Chains
Gza the Genius
Faith No More
Brendon Small
De La Soul
The Offspring
Queens of the Stoneage
Amigo the Devil
The Cure
Lostdog Street Band
Bauhaus
A Wilhelm Scream
Neutral Milk Hotel
Interpol
The Mars Volta
Trampled By Turtles
Tool
Joy Division
Acid Bath
I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT KIND OF MUSIC I LIKE!
20 years ago the music business was dominated by "major labels". There were "independent labels" that were smaller, grassroot organizations who signed more niche bands. This all kinda went out the window with self-publishing and distribution channels like Soundcloud and Bandcamp
Confusement is kind of a fire word, I'm gonna start using it from now on
6:20 the csh lore goes much deeper, twin fantasy is like the 5th or 6th album. There's some great stuff before it too!
1,2,3,4,mbiklb(5), tf. how could it ever be the 5th album?
@dddw. honestly just couldn't remember If mbikmb was before or after tf my bad
@@aaronkerper4004 i also couldnt remember that for a LONG time lol
7:13 It's actually the Big Three. EMI has been defunct since 2012 and their assets have been split between Universal and Warner Bros.
Indie was what all the emo kids got into post 2007, roughly 2008 - 2011, which led to the term "hipster". I was tricked into buying Hospice by The Antlers - what a mistake.
i love hospice 😭
I'm mad you you got my music journey down to a T 😂
Mexican here. What’s wrong being a hipster? I am called a hipster all the time by all my Mexican friends.
@@theonlydiego1nothing.
Mexican hipsters are different I guess. Americans constantly chase trends
i thought indie was like forest themed, slow gay pop
here's the thing, it can be
Two school teachers didnt show up so i could get the notification to watch this
lets goooo
The extra tricky part is licensing deals between majors and indies, are they still considered independent even after said deal has ended (For example, metal label Earache entered a licensing deal with Columbia in the 90’s with 6 bands, that deal ended relatively quickly as it wasn’t very successful).
I think most of the artists you mentioned would have definitely been considered indie back in their day/when they were first starting off (Nirvana for example), but as time went on, they got more popular/bigger, and so (in my opinion) that term should no longer apply to them.
Perhaps most of the confusion lies around people thinking of indie as an actual genre/mistaking it for alternative music.
I personally consider indie artists to be artist who are not as popular/mainstream, DIY (mostly), having low budgets (if any) to create their music, and not being signed to a major record label.
When I say Indie, I refer to Indie as lesser known artists plus Independent. TVOD, Abandoned Pools, Reptilians for example are all Indie, as chances are slim you've heard of them. IDKHow also was for a while
I'm so glad there are others talking about this. I tried to give my opinion that indie shouldn't be a descriptor for music anymore on reddit (big mistake) , but of course, you're not really allowed to have opinions on reddit, and I just got told to "stop caring about genres".
Genres are very important and I hate this kind of anti-genre discourse where people say "stop caring about them they dont mean anything" lol they really do and musical taxonomy is necessary, its very interesting to pinpoint developments and scenes and watch them evolve. There needs to be more books and research on genres and genre theory, it's why I love that project someone at Harvard I think started where he tried to map out every genre on spotify
been a fan since ur opening bands vid and its unreal how much (well deserved) support youve been getting, i cant wait to see where u go from here!! :)
aww thank you i really appreciate it!
Also judging from the comments - it's a confusing term. In the UK indie music is used to define a style/genre of Alt Rock Pop, It's generally very commercially successful and doesn't ness have much to do with who they signed to. However, in the US it is stuck between maybe meaning independent Artist, or niche, and being a sound (as you say in this vid). There are artists like the Smiths that seem to be niche-indie cool for the US, but always seemed odd to me, as they are just one of the big (older) bands over here.
I've thought about this a lot and I've finally come to the conclusion that we need to let go of the origin word "independent" and let "indie" be its own thing. This has happened to a lot of words in the history of the english language, and already to genre terms like "underground" and "alt" so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I had this same thought the other day when thinking about how I got into “indie” music in high school over a decade ago. I thought, “Does indie even mean anything anymore??” So it’s pretty cool to see this video pop up 🤗
Small correction, Twin Fantasy (2011) was actually CSH's 6th album, with 1, 2, 3, 4, and My Back is Killing me Baby coming before it during 2010 and 2011. Also it was recorded in a car, hence the name Car Seat Headrest.
Indie is being used interchangeably with Alternative, and that's where I think this question comes from
What's interesting is that "indie" and "alternative" used to refer to the same type of music back in the 80's (and you'll still see bands from that time like Pixies and R.E.M. described as both due to their influence on both "genres") before they started going off in different directions, with "alternative" being used to describe more mainstream grunge/britpop-influenced music while "indie" described more anti-grunge music and now, with the collapse of mainstream rock, they've kinda melded back together, at least in the rock world, and a lot of the "alt-rock" has been reassessed as just rock while the acutal "alternative" is being reclaimed as "indie"
This has nothing to do with the topic but I've never seen The Room other than the "I did not hit her!" scene so seeing that flower shop scene convinced me I need to watch this movie, that was comedy gold
If an artist is on an indie label, they're "real" indie. Doesn't matter if that label is distributed by a major, sooner or later every big indie label ends up striking a distribution with a major (just ask Merge). If a major owns outright or has a majority stake on a small label, that label ceases to be indie, IMO.
The main difference between the two tends to be not only money and structure but also what's expected of the artist. Majors tend to meddle in the music (quite a lot, in fact), while most indies just trust the artist to hand them something that won't lose them too much money. A lot of indies also only sign artists to one-record deals, so they have complete freedom to leave the label whenever they want.
There are exceptions; back in the '90s some majors would let certain artists hand in uncommercial records (probably for tax reasons, if you ask me), and I've heard of some indie labels that sign artists to onerous contracts. But generally that's the main difference between the two.
I’m a simple man I see tame impala I click
exactly why I clicked
i actually listen to an indie artist, and all her music isn’t called indie by spotify because she makes instrumentals
Spotify makes a lot of mistakes when it comes to typing artist genres, there's an artist I really like and he has a very good alternative base, as well as metal and a bit of EDM, when my most listened to at the end of the year arrived, I saw that Spotify categorized him as pop
So happy to see you updated a new video!!, thank you so much i love the music as usual❤️
When i hear "i like indie" i just interpreted as "i listen to music i found on the Internet thats extremely popular with my demographic but doesn't air on the radio"
mythical notification pull
can you please do this with Alternative because me and my bf got in days long disagreements about it.
Yes yes Blustre, we have video about indie, but what about our favorite genre PoV: Indie?
i think it’s pretty easy to classify indie music. it’s broad and it’s vast. but obviously it means independent artist or studios who make music. but besides that it’s grown into its own form. a lot of indie derives from “jazz” jazzy chords and a scales. mixed with things such as rock, alternative, but now it’s all transformed. indie also means the music is problem really chill. probably heavy in chorus, spring reverb typically and uses a lot of lush and warm synth pads.
so let’s see bands like
The Smiths, LANY, Mac Demarco, Men I Trust, Del Water Gap, Boy Pablo, Puma Blue, King Krule, Yot Club, COIN, Hippo Campus, Stil Woozy, Wallows, Clairo, The Marias the list goes on right all kind of fit into this category of indie with their own spin. indie rock, indie alternative, indie punk, indie jazz, indie funk.
Its bands that just make their own music at home in someone’s room or garage, in someone’s studio that isn’t owned by another company or record label.
i think indie does mean something and i haven’t watched the video yet i plan on it im just at work but i think indie just means one obviously independent artist or who make their own music or in an independent without influence from big corporations.
or also you can classify it as unrestricted rock rock jazz. yacht rock even could be just indie
Yeah, it’s pretty odd. I think indie serves as the same kind of term as pop. Well, indie describes independent artist pop I guess describes popular music. It seems to be more of a social idea than it is a description of what the music sounds like.
never liked using 'indie' as a descriptor for how an artist sounds, its way too vague and two artists that fall under the same "indie" paper definition can end up sounding nothing like each other. Magdalena Bay and The Magnetic Fields both classify as "indie pop", yet there's no similarities they share in terms of the sound of their music
I often found that “unworthy” is a better term than “indie” for all this music
From the UK here, I feel like indie really does depend on where you come from, indie is used to describe things like blur, kasabian, arctic monkeys, etc, a lot of Brit pop really, it's more a style rather than if they are attached to a major label, or maybe we're completely wrong 😂
i love u too indie youtuber blustre
😳
The "every genre" thing, republished on RUclips shorts, brought me to you.
around 1:55. I don't know why you would say that the same thing can *sorta* be said about indie music. i think the two are exactly the same in the sense that there is one person that goes to extreme lengths to carry out a creative vision exactly the way they see it in their mind, funded by themselves. yes it would help to have a crew and thousands of dollars of equipment, it would also help a musician to have the same thing, like a studio, a mixing guy, a vocals guy, different musicians, a symphony, and whatever else to be on the same level as the big guys.
all you need to film a movie is an iphone, so if anything i would say the barrier of entry is lower for a movie than music, because you need to know how to actually play your instrument or whatever, but anyone can film a video.
basically that scene felt very out of place in the video, and didn't really help me to understand indie music any more than i did before.
I'm not mad or anything just felt like sharing, good video though.
The phrase "I listen to Indie" for me actually means "I feel awkward about my relationship with music, but if I explain it I ruin the flow of the conversation so I say a quick answer to keep the flow going."
Im so glad other people understand and agree with this. I kinda hate the word "indie" with how it's so commonly misused.
Fascinating video. I admit, these particular "sounds" of rock I never really investigated... Very mainstream pop and rock throughout my adolescence... Until I recently rewatched Skins with the original soundtrack. Haven't done that for years due to them having to scrap most of it for stream-licensing. Holy crap there is so much music I've never paid attention to, and it's GOOD. It's really good alternative rock. Does it sit in a "alt/indie" playlist I've made? Yes. But the genres could easily be described as soft grunge, garage, new wave and post punk inspired, punk revival etc... A lot of them up and coming English bands in the late-00s / early-2010s, the music of "hipsters" and angsty teens with Tumblr blogs dedicated to mental illness. Majority of it is still indie because they never got signed to a major label. Some of it was definitely major produced. But overall, that show introduced (and is continuing to introduce) people to so many different bands that may have wildly diff genres but will still be called "indie" to the untrained ear.
And that's the good thing about music. We just have to love and appreciate it :)
Everyone describes the pixies as indie rock but MY BROTHER IN CHRIST they had a record label and professional producer for all of their main albulms
@@yeeterdeleter4101 I think it's because they were such a heavy influence on the indie "sound" Like proto Indie.
Kind of like how Back Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were known as some heavy form of blues rock when they started but those early albums are now considered proto metal.
THE WAY I SCREAMED WHEN HE MENTIONED CAR SEAT HEADREST
Well, indie music is any genre of music made by independent people who arent associated with a label, but everyone seems to have associated it with a sound rather than what it actually is
My 2 favorite albums on the thumbnail lol
What I would define indie as is "those 30 same albums you see in every topster ever made"
Great video! I would love if you could please make a video on each song Elliott Smith wrote. Esp. Roman Candle.
Probably the only time I'm grateful for covid because I'm in the first ten comments lmao love your content man
thank you :)
To me "Indie" means no record label, self-published.
Which means that my favorite indie band is... Paramore 😭
C86 style shambling, anyone?
That used to mean Indie, didn't it?
I never use the term. But I don't really talk about music much. My favorite band is NIN (Label: Interscope).
If that's too mainstream for someone, it's their loss.
i was just pondering this, thanks
6:21 Twin fantasy was not their 1st album, 1 was iirc.
FIRST ALBUM TWIN FANTASY??? dang man how are you not ripped apart by the fans
Indie is whatever I listened to in 2020
I remember Paste magazine wrote this cover page article saying ‘Indie is Dead’ way back in 2005 or something… essentially, they said the term was ‘dead’ because Indie had won! The internet and now streaming became the great equalizers, allowing small artists the same reach and potential influence as the major label groups.
wow im kind of surprised he didnt mention tally hall (im a tally hall fan)
A great example of indie and what is considered the first indie pop album is ram by Paul McCartney
0:31 hah i got to see this man live
Who is it?
@@wyatthaskell9988alex g 🔥🔥
@afraidto could you share which NPR tiny desk video that was?
It's similar to what happened to the term "alternative" in the 90s.
what evokes even more "confusement" is spotify's genre from the wrapped last year, "pov: indie" wtf does that mean
Really big indie fan. But if you go to my likes song on Spotify, select indie. You’ll get so many different sounding song that while I all like do not flow together well. So it’s hard to pick indie song for a particular mood. Mean while I can pick rock and get exactly what I’m looking for
Indie is more just an “aesthetic” now so when people say they listen to indie they’re just trying to say they’re really edgy and misunderstood.
This should never have actually been a genre imo. It's always been too vague bc it refers to the status of an artist and not any particular part of the sound. I think alt folk would be a better turm(at least for what is typically seen as "indie"
I SAW MINOVA ON THAT PLAYLIST 🤧🤧🤧
I was once told that indie music which, I was listening to, was uncool because it was hippie music. That confused me because the music in question was fall out boy and I didn’t really see the connection to hippies…
A year later pitch perfect 3 came out and any thoughts of hippies or uncool were gone.
5:25 VACATIONS MENTION RRRAAAH
I think it is the same that happens with “lofi” it is not a damn genre of music with some noise, it is a production style of music recorded at home with not the best equipment(low fidelity)
Lofi black metal.
A lot of these terms can be silly, Garage-something, Nu-something, Future-something, Lofi-something, Art-something, Post-Something, Indie-Something. Add a Wave and a core and your away. Regarding lo-fi I used to see it used to describe stuff like the first Metronomy album a kind of loose meandering mix of guitar music with bits of electronica, then later lofi house with poor quality raw sound for artists like chaos in the CBD & mo kolours (though he's got a lot more going on then just house) then a couple years later the term was used for a lot of beatmusic (though their was def lofi-hiphop around before it was just not called that), but it then morphed into essentially the equivalent of Smooth Jazz.
El indie, en su estilo musical, se refiere a música que tiene un caracter modesto, donde la producción (sea o no independiente de un sello) busca un sonido no tan pulido a la música comercial. Un género donde la instrumental no es compleja o virtuosa como tal, donde el tipo de composición se centra más en el aspecto melódico y lírico. Si lo vemos solo desde la concepción genérica de "indie es musica independiente a un sello" estamos dejando lo que realmente caracteriza al indie, sobretodo el de los años 90. Entonces, considero que estamos llamando indie erroneamente a mucha música de hoy en día.
What I find funny is that technically I listen to a lot of "indie music" since most music I listen to isn't owned by a major record label. However, it isn't that indie sound. I listen to a lot of speedcore and other hardcore electronic music. So I could technically say "I listen to indie music" and actually be talking about M1dy and Coakira.
I'm slightly confused why you solidified nirvana as "technically indie" because they started out genuinely indie but are saying it's weird that billie eilish is considered indie when she too started out genuinely indie. I would also say she's just as influential in respect to the current sound of indie-pop music, similar to how you said nirvana was for indie-rock
7:08 There are only three major labels: Sony, Universal (UMG), and Warner (WMG). EMI was broken up in 2012 and each of the Big Three received part of it. Sony got EMI Publishing, and EMI's labels were supposed to go to UMG, but regulators forced EMI to sell some of the labels to WMG for antitrust interests. There are some confusing spots (e.g. EMI had to sell Parlophone to WMG, but Parlophone had to sell Apple, the Beatles' label, to UMG), but EMI no longer exists as an independent label. UMG owns the EMI name and reopened the label a few years ago.
It's worth noting that music and labels can be owned and/or distributed by different companies in different regions. For instance, Swans' To Be Kind was released on Young God, Michael Gira's own independent label, in North America, but it was released on Mute worldwide. Mute is officially an independent label, but WMG owns its North American distribution and Bertelsmann (BMG) owns its worldwide distribution and back catalog. UMG owns Mute's worldwide physical distribution through a deal with BMG, but BMG is still the worldwide digital distributor. (Mute is one of the labels that was under EMI when it was broken up in 2012. BMG was formerly associated with Sony.)
UMG, WMG, and Sony all operate in countries outside of North America, and other countries can have their own major labels in addition to the Big Three. Japan has Avex, Germany has BMG, etc.
thank you eminem
I've gotten to the point where whenever somebody asks me what kind of music I listen to, I just take my phone out to show them my Spotify algorithm and listening history. Its easier that way.
I usually follow indie with another genre, like indie rock/indie pop if i’m describing it. I also imagine it’s basically just doing whatever the fuck you want without fitting into any one genre
Indie Rock is a subgenre of Alternative along with grunge , indie pop, etc.
What would vacations or cottonwood firing squad be considered, pop or something else? Like I genuinely don’t know what to call it other than indie at this point.