Sometimes used interchangeably with “guitar pop rock”, in the mid-1980s, the term “indie” began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels. During the 1990s, Grunge bands broke into the mainstream, and the term lost its original counter-cultural meaning. Yet, it became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s it developed subgenres and related styles including lo-fi, noise pop, emo, slowcore, post-rock and math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success.
– Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
by AEUNA
Writing Light felt like a silent eye opener for me. The kind that doesn’t announce itself but lands softly. It came right before I was about to fully jump into a new beginning, letting go. Not a dramatic revelation. Just a quiet, honest look at what I was leaving behind, and what I was choosing to carry forward.
I’m AEUNA (pronounced ay-yu-nuh), an independent singer-songwriter and producer from Cebu, Philippines. On April 24, I’m releasing my new single, Light.
Continue readingby Sydney J
Hi, I’m Sydney J, an indie-folk artist based in Manhattan, New York. I’ve been writing songs for as long as I can remember, but in 2025, my approach to songwriting began to shift. I became more interested in creating something open-ended, less like a straightforward retelling of events, and more like a space where multiple emotions and experiences could exist at once.
That shift is what led me to create my most popular song, “but so close!”.
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“There is a place in the heart that/ will never be filled / a space / and even during / the best moments / and / the greatest times.” Charles Bukowski (You get so alone at times that it just makes sense)
The universe is full of magical things and insightful signs.
However, like the sun is sometimes completely out of sight, hidden behind the thickest winter fog and grey skies, it can be hard to connect with it when going through certain moments or chapters of our lives. Magic can seem out of reach or, worse, forever gone.
How I experience the world and everyday life is a rare and precious gift I am very grateful for. It also comes with frequently struggling with finding balance and peace.
I have so much joy to share and so much darkness in me that I still wonder how can these two coexist with such intensity within the same person? And what to do with such parameters?
Continue readingby The Nouve
For Leonard Cohen, Felix Flaucher, Karl Liebknecht & Rosa Luxemburg…
So yes, I’m writing songs, producing songs, mixing songs, writing lyrics, novels, screenplays, essays, doing video clips, short films, sure… but you want to know WHY? Great Question, man! What makes us doing what we do? Is there a rational and catchy answer, maybe a citation (Where is Leonard Cohen when you really need him? Why did he had to go at all??) – Well, “Music was my first love”, eh right, that’s what they all say… but that never led to give up their normal lives: they never had the idea to look behind the curtain, sell themselves at the Crossroads and die on the dream to release just this one and only song that sounds like it did in their head once before they recorded it.
So why? It doesn’t make sense if you could have stayed on the safe and secure consumer site, does it?
Continue readingby Poli Nika
I look into his eyes and remain silent. I know my silence wounds him, but I can’t utter a single word. My throat tightens, my head spins with the darkest thoughts I’d never dare say out loud. “What would he think of me then?” These are the monsters inside me, and I’ll never let them destroy what we have. I’ll never let them out, because then…
I often think about injustice in life. Sometimes, circumstances turn out so that the life you lived yesterday no longer exists today.
I could feel it when I left my hometown to go to university and left my closest friends behind. I still miss them very much because we can’t see them often.
Continue readingby Tucker Coughlin a.k.a. In Luna’s Garden
Mina vs the Pit of Despair is an album born out of desperation. I’ve struggled with chronic depression and suicidal thoughts since I was 11 years old. I’m sure many of you can relate to teenage years full of tumultuous emotions and searching for answers. My memories of high school and early college are filled with trips to the doctor, seven different therapists, countless medication modifications, and reading philosophy and religion, all culminating in a 3-month inpatient residency. No matter what I did, nothing could convince me that life was worth living. In a final attempt, I decided to construct my own thesis on why life is inherently good. This effort would coalesce over two years into my debut album, Mina vs the Pit of Despair.
Continue readingby K Gocebe a.k.a. The Strange & Odd Secrets Club
What is The Strange & Odd Secrets Club? It’s not a club, or even a band. It’s really just one person – Me. Hello there! I try to put an emphasis on making my songs sound like a collective effort rather than the solo project that it truly is. Through some “social experimenting” with other musicians I found that I work much better in solitude. Part of this is due to my insecurity surrounding vulnerable lyrical and arrangement ideas, but also because I love taking on the personal responsibility of creating each element of a song.
by John Kennedy of The Dark City Kings
Out of the blue? That doesn’t even describe the moment. Dark City Kings was the runt of the litter in the Asheville music scene. We’d lost two guitar players in the Spring and had just brought in a new guitar player and fiddle player. The core of Dark City Kings has been around the Asheville music scene for a decade – but this band was the runt of the litter and then tossed into a raging river to drown.
Dark City Kings? We were a drunken brewery band that was slowly writing original material. We wrote simple songs. We meant them. We wrote melodies you can sing in the shower and big sing-along choruses. We’d just decided to try again, write an entirely new songbook with this new band formation, practice twice a week, and play a show once a week.
We played our first show together on August 5th.
Continue readingby Tuffy Brazil of STROMBLE FIX
It all started in 1990 when five teenagers formed a new punk band. In fact, STROMBLE FIX was a merger of two bands that rehearsed door-to-door in the local youth center in the Ruhr area of Germany.
We played many shows in the early 90s and recorded our songs on 8-track or 16-track tape machines in a friend’s studio whenever we could afford to spend a weekend. The music was published on compact cassettes, and there was a culture of sharing tapes with other bands or even taping tapes to get the music heard. Mail orders these days worked so that you requested a printed catalog first and then ordered your vinyl or cassettes by writing a letter.
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