What Does 'Indie' Sound Like?
 

Just something I was wondering about after reading this and noting that while punk and hardcore have identifiable conventions and a shared sound, I've never heard a pleasing, or even sensible, definition of 'indie', even though people like to throw the word around like so much pineapple custard.

Basically, when you read something that's described as 'indie', what do you associate it with? A band, a sound, a mindset? I'm not too interested in hearing what preconceived listeners you have in mind (lord knows I don't intend on bringing HYYYYYYPPPPPSST-TUR-hating-HYYYYYYPPPPPSST-TUR discussions near here), but more the actual music itself.

Indie is a description of how the performer or band relates to the industry, so it really doesn't sound like anything in particular. On a more subjective level I have always thought of Indie music as weird and pretentious. It appeals to people who see the word "Mainstream" as a profanity.

Indie bands produce their albums through Indie labels. That's what makes them Indie. It is strangely ironic, because (edit: many of) these Indie labels are owned by major record companies anyway. So alternative might be a better term to use than Indie, but then again there already is a genre called alternative that was strangely mainstream in the nineties. Now I'm rambling. Indie is a silly term in my mind.

Actually, running some indie bands through things like the RIAA Radar shows that they are, in fact, on independent labels.

And it appeals to those pretentious types, yes, but also tons of other people who just like it. I like Indie, and I like mainstream stuff that actually tries to do it's own stuff.

But Indie is a large umbrella term, so indie itself is a very diverse 'genre'. Really, it's the same thing as College Rock was back in the 90's. Many of the bands labeled as Indie Rock right now seem to be Baroque Pop, but there's a lot of other subgenres out there, too.

"Indie" as a mindset/culture, however, is annoying and should be stopped.

Indie, as I see it, is:

A group of individuals who, without much money, create a movie and/or piece of music - such as a garage band, or a couple of college students budgeting their project for a few thousand dollars. Their efforts are noticed, and they are paid for them, creating movies and music not going with the norm, but individual ideas that members of the group have.

That's probably wrong, but it's how I see Indie.

I don't like stepping on peoples toes. So, I never meant to imply all people who listen to Indie music are pretentious. All I meant to say is that all the bands that have been categorized as Indie that I've heard sound unappealing to me.

Fencer's on the money. The music may be good, but the culture is about stroking their own penises while at the same time telling everyone else that have small balls.

I agree with this 100%

The indie culture is a matter of groups of people all swarming in a single direction of 'new' sound or band, followed by ignoring that music or band the instant they become mainstream. Wang-comparisons in the form of Who You Saw In Concert are not uncommon. And no, this isn't just QC information. I've seen this.

All seriously, though, indie music seems to be the up-and-coming light rock and things along those lines. Indie is just kind of an 'term' used in reference to most up-and-coming artists. I know that 30 Seconds To Mars could be considered indie, but I have a hard time being sure of that fact.

See, I've never really gotten this. While I'm sure there are douchebags out there who stop liking/lose respect for 'successful' bands (these are the same douchebags who like using the term 'selling out'), does not actively engaging in the 'Mainstream' mark you as Indie? Since I got my iPod and a player for my car I've had less and less reason to listen to the radio so I'm usually about three months out of the loop on current Top 40 music, but when I confess ignorance to a certain popular band most of the time it's taken as an affront or I'm painted as actively avoiding 'popular' music.
While I understand that, I've heard/read something along the lines of "indie is a term so far reaching as to be meaningless, but when we say it you know what we mean" numerous times, and each time I want to grab the person by the shoulders and shake him until he explains what exactly "what we mean" fucking means. Hence, this thread.
I think the best quote I've ever seen to battle this sort of generalizing mindset is
Hmm...maybe this should go under NoYB's part...
That's not wrong, I just think you're describing general Independent projects, or even simply DIY works.
Examples include...?

Going by the most bias-driven definition I can come up with, "indie" means that guy in your college dorm who constantly sneered at you for listening to Linkin Park or Green Day or whatever, and who himself listened to ten trillion different bands you'd never heard of before which no matter how hard to like them (because you secretly envied Indie Guy and the hard-won authenticity of his sneering contempt for mass-culture-indoctrinated humanity), still sounded like total shit. As such, "indie music" is anything that sounds like the kind of shit that guy would have listened to, which broadly speaking includes "alt country", rappers that call themselves "hip hop artists", Stephen Malkmus, and generally anything that considers being creatively shitty an acceptable substitute for actually sounding good. See also: anything that gets put on the the required-rotation list at any college radio station.

Determining the correlation of this definition with your own experience or any objectively observable reality is left as an exercise for the reader.