Indie rock is a genre of
alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Indie rock was extremely diverse, with subgenres that include
indie pop,
jangle pop, and
lo-fi, among others. Originally used to describe record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with
alternative rock. As
grunge and
punk revival bands in the US, and then
Britpop bands in the UK, broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, a number of indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.
