Beirut
Andrew Bird
Bonnie Prince Billy
Iron and Wine
Frightened Rabbit
Langhorne Slim
Man Man
Modest Mouse
Mountain Goats
Nana Grizol
The National
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Shins
Elliot Smith
Wilco
Wolf Parade

I don't know if you call all of those indie or not, but I do.

bright eyes
tegan and sara
dredg
belle and sebastian
imogen heap

no order.

explosions in the sky
bright eyes
beirut
gogol bordello
yo la tengo
elliott smith
cat power
the shins
the strokes
arctic monkeys
andrew bird
the libertines
cold war kids
bon iver

i've tried many times, and still don't like sufjan or animal collective.

THE ARCTIC MONKEYS
THE SHINS
COLD WAR KIDS
THE WOMBATS
VAMPIRE WEEKEND

i beleive that indie is now a "sound" more than a band being unsigned or with an idenpendent label.

indie has definitely taken on a genre of it's own as it is now encompassing bands signed to big labels..

nonetheless, some of my favorites are:
the strokes
the shins
the hives
arcade fire
babyshambles
the libertines
gliss
and I saw a truly indie band open up for gliss a couple weeks ago. Twin Berlin. you guys should check them out. They opened up for Gliss and The Takeover UK.. just a small band in the boston area, but search their myspace, they're good

I think we can all of course agree that all of these classifications are ambiguous and not very realiable when describing music. But, I think "indie" music is really, what people describe music that is not "mainstream", which is equally ambiguous, but in my mind a little easier to pin down. "Mainstream" in general would be music with glossy clean production, with large anthematic choruses and hooks, very standard song structure, and typically shallow lyrics. I think "Indie" is what people think when they hear music that breaks that mold. Regardless of wether it's on a major label, popular, or played all the time on the radio.

i believe that indie has become more about the sound that the label, but i dont think its worth debating over and over. here are my favorites in no particular order:

arcade fire
the shins
the flaming lips
the strokes
modest mouse
broken social scene
wolf parade
bloc party
conor oberst
the national

The Weakerthans

An interesting article about the history of indie music.

http://www.independent.co.uk/a...die-band-870520.html

That article is pretty shallow. A rose by any other name...What's the point? Experimental, more "soulful" "ballsy" music still exists, so why bemoan the fact that the current trend in popular music is skinny jean guitar rock instead of boy bands or something else? The same thing happened for "punk" being infiltrated by artificial pop bands, but that genre at least had an ethos in their namesake that was threatened by commercialism.

Hmm... some of you have pretty decent taste, which is very surprising to me. I can't contribute much as I don't really have much money to buy new CDs, but here are a few (some were already listed, but oh well): Islands (ohmygodf-ingamazing), The Unicorns, Iron & Wine, The Promise Ring (a staple), Maritime, Pedro the Lion, and more... I gotta go, I'll think of more tomorrow.