Sweaty, Slutty, and Covered in Cheap Beer – Indie Sleaze is Back

Ready or not, electroclash has been back for a while. I've put together a playlist of the sleaziest revivalists of the genre.

When I first heard the term “indie sleaze” applied to music, I knew exactly what it meant. Dancing in sweaty basements, drinking PBR, and listening to very, very specific bands: the Rapture, CSS, Death From Above 1979, LCD Soundsystem, Uffie. The nostalgia for this era hits me harder than any other, so making a playlist of new musicians inspired by its sound was not an assignment I took lightly.

The music here won’t sound much like second wave post-punk (Interpol, Arctic Monkeys) or riot grrrl (Le Tigre, Gossip), all of which gets lumped under the same indie sleaze umbrella. “Stuff we danced in basements to in the 2000s” is a perfectly legitimate definition, but I can’t help but feel that we should be leaning harder into the sleaze portion of the term.

So instead of indie rock, this playlist leans heavily into electroclash. It’s (mostly) newer, younger artists making you feel awfully old by taking inspiration from the mid-2000s, American Apparel, bloghouse era of anxious, slutty, two-guys-and-their-synths indie pop. It’s based on a period so recent you didn’t think it could have made a full spin on the trend cycle just yet. But here we are. And it’s time to get sweaty.

First, a few standouts. Then, the goods.