For decades, indie rock was aligned with the underground, embodying DIY culture with a willful, even gleeful, deviation from the mainstream sound. It broke into the mainstream in the ‘00s thanks to a moment in the zeitgeist when a remarkable number of timeless albums by indie bands were released, a glut of technological advancements changed how we listened to music, a seismic shift in taste for TV and movie music supervisors, the explosion of music festivals like Coachella, and a sea change in the perception of “selling out” for bands. The year it all came to a head? 2004.
Here’s the story:
Between 2003 and 2005, American indie rock was having a moment. What had once largely been a near-whisper network of bands playing small clubs, releasing records on independent labels, and building audiences through blogs, college radio plays, and relentless touring, was becoming increasingly visible in the mainstream. The music industry hadn’t suddenly turned indie, but the boundaries between alternative, indie, and pop were becoming much blurrier. A generation of bands found ways to reach listeners well beyond the traditional indie-rock circuit, helped by growing online communities, music blogs, college radio, and, perhaps unexpectedly, television.
At the turn of the millennium, New York’s music scene was white hot with bands like the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, the Rapture, and Interpol blasting their way through an undreamt-of post-9/11 new zeitgeist. While that scene has been exhaustively documented, this show looks at all the other bands making their way through the dramatic shifts in politics, music, technology, and starting to ride the waves of the internet outside of the spotlight of New York City.
At the center of this shift was The Postal Service. The duo of Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and producer Jimmy Tamborello released Give Up in February 2003, creating an unlikely bridge between Gibbard’s emotionally direct songwriting and Tamborello’s electronic production. Songs like “Such Great Heights” sounded simultaneously intimate and futuristic, and the album became one of the decade’s defining indie releases, becoming one of Sub Pop’s bestselling albums of all time. Death Cab for Cutie, meanwhile, were steadily moving from the underground toward a much larger audience. Their 2003 album Transatlanticism expanded their reputation for atmospheric, emotionally precise songwriting and established the band as one of the most important groups of the era.
Ben Gibbard performing acoustically as the Postal Service. Photo courtesy of Bootsy Holler.
Modest Mouse made an even more dramatic leap. The band's 2004 album Good News for People Who Love Bad News transformed them from longtime indie favorites into a genuine alternative-rock success story. “Float On” became a radio hit far beyond the band's existing fan base, while frontman Isaac Brock's distinctive voice and the band's eccentric, restless sound gave mainstream listeners something considerably stranger than conventional rock radio usually offered. The shift in audiences was strange for fans and the band alike, suddenly rubbing shoulders with frat boys in backward baseball caps who had never been to a show before.
Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. Photo courtesy of Bootsy Holler.
The Shins followed a different path to visibility. Their 2001 album Oh, Inverted World had already earned a devoted audience, but the band's profile exploded after “New Slang” appeared in the 2004 film Garden State. The moment in the film where Natalie Portman declares, “This song will change your life,” was a jaw-dropping moment for fans and for the band. It also became emblematic of a new way for indie music to travel: instead of relying solely on radio or blogs, songs could become cultural touchstones through films, television, commercials, and carefully curated soundtracks.
The Shins. Photo courtesy of Brian Tamborello.
Television was particularly important. The O.C., which premiered in 2003, treated music as a central part of its identity rather than background decoration. The show's mix of indie rock and accessible alternative music introduced its young, mainstream audience to artists who might otherwise have remained outside the pop-cultural conversation. The series famously featured Death Cab for Cutie as the favorite band of Seth Cohen (Adam Brody). He mentioned them so often they practically became a character on the show. The show featured live performances, too, just because show creator Josh Schwartz really wanted to see his favorite bands play live. The O.C. had influential soundtracks that helped establish the idea that discovering an unfamiliar band could be part of watching a network television drama.
Death Cab for Cutie. Photo courtesy of Barsuk Records.
Grey's Anatomy, which debuted in 2005, pushed that model even further. Under the watchful eye of Alexandra Patsavas, its emotional storytelling was frequently paired with atmospheric indie and alternative songs, turning relatively obscure tracks into memorable moments for millions of viewers. The show's success helped demonstrate the commercial value of music supervision and gave artists another route to an audience that didn't necessarily listen to alternative radio. To this day, some people can’t listen to Tegan and Sara without thinking of scenes from Grey’s.
Tegan and Sara. Photo courtesy of Dustin Rabin.
Meanwhile, Spoon were quietly establishing themselves as one of indie rock's most durable bands. Their 2002 album Kill the Moonlight had already earned critical acclaim, and 2005's Gimme Fiction continued their evolution toward leaner, more sophisticated rock songwriting. Rather than relying on a single crossover hit, Spoon built an audience through consistency, touring, and a reputation for crafting economical songs that revealed new details with repeated listens.
Across the border, Montreal-based Arcade Fire became one of the defining new bands of the period. Their 2004 debut, Funeral, arrived with an unusually ambitious sound: sweeping arrangements, multiple instruments, dramatic dynamics, and songs about grief, family, memory, and displacement. Funeral became a critical sensation, selling more albums than the label or the band ever expected. It also pushed its way to more mainstream audiences, helping establish a template for a new kind of indie rock that was emotionally huge, orchestral, and capable of filling increasingly large rooms without abandoning its outsider identity.
Arcade Fire. Photo courtesy of Merge Records.
The period also saw a flourishing of bands whose appeal challenged the idea that indie rock had a single sound. Rilo Kiley combined Jenny Lewis's and Blake Sennett's songwriting with elements of folk, country, pop, and rock, steadily expanding their audience with records such as 2004's More Adventurous. The New Pornographers, a Canadian supergroup built around songwriters including A.C. Newman and Neko Case, brought bright melodies and dense harmonies to an indie scene increasingly interested in sophisticated pop songwriting. And Tegan and Sara were developing a passionate American following with emotionally direct, guitar-driven songs that sat comfortably between indie rock, alternative, and singer-songwriter traditions.
The New Pornographers. Photo courtesy of Erica Henderson.
What connected these artists was less a unified musical style than a shared cultural ecosystem. The early 2000s indie scene was unusually porous: a band could emerge from a tiny club circuit, attract attention from blogs and critics, appear on a television soundtrack, and suddenly find itself playing to thousands of people. The internet was making discovery easier, while television networks were becoming surprisingly adventurous tastemakers.
By the end of 2005, indie rock had not exactly “gone mainstream.” The term still suggested independence, experimentation, and a certain distance from commercial pop. But the distance was shrinking. The success of Modest Mouse, the growing profile of Death Cab for Cutie, the cult surrounding Arcade Fire, the continued popularity of Postal Service, and the visibility of artists such as Broken Social Scene, The Shins, Spoon, and Rilo Kiley showed that there was a substantial audience for music that felt personal, unusual, and slightly outside the mainstream.
Broken Social Scene. Photo courtesy of Norman Wong.
The indie-rock boom of 2003–2005 was therefore less a sudden invasion of the mainstream than a gradual collapse of the walls separating it from the underground. The Postal Service could make electronic pop feel intimate; Modest Mouse could turn an eccentric indie sound into a radio hit; Arcade Fire could make grand, experimental rock commercially compelling; and television could make a previously unknown song feel like the soundtrack to a generation's life.