Indie Rock

Indie rock is genre of alternative rock that primarily exists in the independent underground music scene. It refers to rock musicians that are or were unsigned, or have signed to independent record labels rather than major record labels. Genres or subgenres often associated with indie rock include lo-fi, post-rock, sadcore, C86 and math rock, to list a few, and other related (and sometimes overlapping) categories include shoegazing and indie pop.

Indie rock artists place a premium on maintaining complete control of their music and careers, releasing albums on independent record labels (sometimes their own) and relying on touring, word-of-mouth and airplay on independent or college radio stations for promotion. Some definitive British indie rock bands of the 1980s were The Smiths, The Stone Roses and The Jesus and Mary Chain, whose music directly influenced 1990s alternative rock movements such as shoegazing and Britpop.

During the early 1990s, alternative rock, led by grunge bands such as Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, broke into the mainstream, achieving commercial chart success and widespread exposure. Shortly thereafter, the alternative genre became commercialised as mainstream success attracted major-label investment and commercially-oriented or manufactured acts with a formulaic, conservative approach. With this, the meaning of the label "alternative" changed from its original, more counter-cultural meaning to refer to alternative music that achieved mainstream success and the term "indie rock" was used to refer to the bands and genres that remained underground.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Indie rock".