Setting the record straight: what “indie” music actually is

Graphics by Kay Joseph

Kay Joseph | June 2026

Indie-pop, indie-rock, indie sleaze. These terms might seem familiar to you if you’ve listened to artists such as Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, and The Strokes. Look in every indie playlist or mix that Spotify curates for you, and these names are a common recurrence. But are they actually indie? And what is ‘indie’ music even? 

What people define as “indie” VS what “indie” actually means

To give a brief background on the term, indie first emerged in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, introduced into the British rock world by artists like Buzzcocks and R.E.M. It further gained popularity in the 1990s, and a decade later, indie had expanded to every genre imaginable, from hip-hop to jazz and R&B.

Indie is mostly used as an umbrella term, since it’s often interchangeable with the meaning of independent. Indie will be used before other genres like pop and rock to indicate an independent artist (someone not operating under a major music label) making music in that genre. 

The concept is simple enough, yet the friction arises when artists who are not independent are categorised as indie. Why and how would they be seen as such? 

Over time, indie has become more than a label for independent artists. In the current day and age, indie appears to be an explicit genre that refrains from mainstream music and is associated with other genres like lo-fi, bedroom pop, and, most of all, alternative. 

Next to that, it has become an aesthetic and appearance that mainly Gen Z lives by. Not only personally, but also socially.

Nowadays, the word indie is applied to anything, making it difficult to pinpoint what still counts as such. The most recent iteration of indie music in specific is the newer aesthetic and style everyone’s familiar with, which rose to popularity pre-pandemic. Artists such as Clairo, Wallows, Rex Orange County, and Billie Eilish all took the industry by storm and became staples on indie community playlists. 

Literally speaking, indie is used as an abbreviation of the word ‘independent’. Applied specifically to music, an artist can be categorised as ‘indie’ when their production occurs independently from a commercial record label, such as Sony or Warner Music. 

Naturally, this classification of the term includes artists of numerous genres. In other words, there’s no such thing as an indie genre, and many artists, such as Mac DeMarco, fall under alternative rock, which has gradually merged with indie rock through significant overlap. It has created a huge contradiction: many ‘independent rock’ artists do not work on independent labels. 

Why the term is misused

What leads to the misuse of this broad term? Knowing its history, indie has since then grown out into a subculture, something that cannot be categorised and stands on its own. Everything that can’t be defined, or refuses to, is indie. Non-conformative and most of all, unpolished.

And one of the keys is in what has been discussed earlier: indie has become an aesthetic and a lifestyle rather than a business model. A genre like indie pop becomes a performative category for bigger artists to mould into to fit this generation’s obsession with aesthetics and visuals. Like the sound of indie, the indie image is not manufactured and artificial. 

An example of this is the oversaturated ‘indie/alt’ TikTok aesthetic, popular during and shortly after the pandemic, with artists like 100gecs, Doja Cat, Jvke and Beach Bunny at the forefront of it. 

To hop on the nostalgia train quickly, the 2014 Tumblr ‘grunge’ aesthetic took the internet by storm, with artists such as Arctic Monkeys – specifically their AM album – MARINA, and Halsey. 

Two years later, on the then-upcoming platform Instagram, the ‘Art-hoe’ aesthetic rose in popularity. Niche memes, Fjallraven Kanken bags, chequered prints and references to paintings such as “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, paired up with artists girl in red, Tame Impala, BROCKHAMPTON, and Cuco. 

All of these were categorised as ‘indie’, but when looking at the appearance, they are completely different things. 

More radically put, ‘being indie’ is something performative, driven by a desire to stand out in the crowd, and it drips all the way to the music they listen to, which – in this day and age – is categorised as such. 

That is when the question comes in:

Which artists are actually indie? 

Arctic Monkeys are currently signed to Domino Recording Company, which makes their music indie, but Tame Impala is signed to Columbia Records, a Sony Music subsidiary. His music is not indie, but it can still be categorised as alternative. The same can be said for the rising Irish band Inhaler, whose label, Polydor Records, is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. 

Trio boygenius, although artists Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are signed to indie labels individually, are releasing their music through a major record label, Interscope Records. As boygenius, their music doesn’t qualify as indie by definition. 

Singer-songwriter Clairo released her third studio album independently but signed with a major record label last year. 

Bleech 9:3’s Paris-based label, XIII Bis Records, acts independently, which means that the four-piece band is indie. 

Originally, Cage The Elephant was signed to an independent company, but they later released their music through a major corporate label, so their music is not indie. 

And the list goes on. 

Music communicates emotions and feelings that words lack, so does it really matter who is indie and who isn’t? All those listed and beyond are artists trying to make it, and it’s a given that major labels have the funds that independent labels sometimes cannot provide. 

Maybe when you’re debating with your friends over which artists are actually independent and which are categorised as such because the overlap with alternative rock is immense, that’s when the nuance is relevant. 

At the end of the day, we all try to survive another day. So maybe it’s not that deep, as long as you listen to music that makes that day worth it.