First, a disclaimer: It's hard to define what the best indie albums are, because it's hard to define what ‘indie music’ really is. What was once an identifier of music made outside the major label system (in other words: independent) has since come to encompass all kinds of artists and genres under the vague umbrella of guitar music, and often beyond.
Now, we consider indie music to be a vibe. An ethos. A way of life. A smudgy kohl eyeliner or a cigarette hanging jauntily out the side of your mouth but never actually being lit. Over the past four decades of breathing in its aural smog, plenty of legends have been born, and with them some truly groundbreaking, generation-defining records. From the jagged, anti-establishment creations of the '80s to the frenetic hedonism of post-Y2K adolescence, indie music has always acted as a soundtrack for the youth of the times, carving itself out amongst the culture and politics of the day.
To that end, here are GQ's picks of 15 of the best indie albums of all time.
15. Lightspeed Champion – Falling Off the Lavender Bridge (2008)
Long before Dev Hynes became Blood Orange, and right after he fronted the rock band Test Icicles, the musical multi-hyphenate was Lightspeed Champion, an indie artist with nothing but a guitar and a notebook full of lyrics. Among all of his other projects, Lightspeed Champion's 2008 debut album Falling Off the Lavender Bridge often gets overlooked, but it's a beautiful creation, full of soft guitar melodies, rolling drum patterns and poetic lyricism that could sound twee today, but still somehow works. If you're old enough to properly remember the late 2000s, then some of these songs and videos, like “Tell Me What It's Worth” will make you feel so nostalgic you'll want to be sick (in a good way).
14. Be Your Own Pet – Get Awkward (2008)
If you for some reason missed out on the wild, frenetic, snotty indie punk of Be Your Own Pet then stop what you're doing and listen to Get Awkward immediately. Fronted by a then-21 year old Jemina Pearl, this Tennessee band bought a kind of over-the-top riotousness to the American indie scene that is still so fun to listen to today. Standout track “Becky” – a brilliantly twisted, bratty ode to breaking up with your best friend – actually got removed from the US album tracklist for being too violent (“Me and her, we'll kick your ass / We'll wait with knives after class”) as did “Black Hole” and “Blow Yr Mind”. Fortunately for us, you can still listen to them all in the UK – and this album is an absolute riot.
13. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand (2004)
There’s a kind of unabashed theatricality to a lot of '00s indie music that, in the cold, cynical light of 2024, might feasibly feel a little cringe. An ‘oh, you actually want us to know you tried?” kind of eye-roll that has stripped a lot of indie offerings to the corners of mumblecore. It’s close to impossible to imagine an indie album like Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled 2004 debut coming out today – with all its thumping exhibitionism and zippy guitar shreds – but its earnest corniness isn’t any less listenable than it was a decade ago. It’s a startlingly fun and fully realised album, with every song engineered into a cohesive audaciousness that sounds like it’s soundtracking you stumbling through a rattling funhouse.
12. Wolf Alice – Visions of a Life (2017)
The ‘90s and ’00s might have been the UK's indie heyday, but the sound of that defining generation still lingers like the smell of crushed ciggies across today's music landscape. Enter Wolf Alice's Visions of a Life, a 2017 album that drips in the nostalgia of decades prior. Playing the whole thing from start to finish feels a bit like trying to recall a dream, every song lingering just out of reach in a haze of haunting synths and rhythmic drums. It’s beautifully frantic, too, hopping between electronic pop and hypnotic rock. Lead singer Ellie Rowsell’s voice is filled with the kind of choral rage of 90s predecessors like Garbage and The Cranberries while the music around her feels rooted in timeless ideals: lost youth, sex and mortality.
11. The Shins – Oh, Inverted World (2001)
UK indie classics often reflect the bleak and rainy reality of living here (Oasis literally made windbreakers their Thing). Over the other side of the pond, however, the idea of sunny, optimistic music is much more pervasive – like The Shins for example, whose back catalogue is mostly drenched in the sort of healthy dose of vitamin D that will be recognisable to anyone whose adolescent brain was recalibrated by the premiere of The OC. That said, there’s an undercurrent of melancholy to their debut album Oh, Inverted World – it's all intimate, wistful indie folk, gentle vocals and dreamy acoustics that could have been catapulted from the '70s. Also, let this be a reminder to rewatch Garden State – a soundtrack they feature prominently on – and which (shock, horror) turns 20 this year!
10. The 1975 – The 1975 (2013)
The 1975 were ruthlessly torn apart upon the release of their debut – which was dubbed derivative and trite – probably because their fanbase were mostly passionate young women. Still, 10 years on, many are looking back on their breakout with a bit more reverence. The idea that the album could have ever lacked substance boggles the mind when you consider so many of The 1975’s hallmarks of layering vocals and looping percussion are embedded throughout its 16 songs. It’s also an incredibly diverse album, ranging from Roxy Music-esque jangly rock in songs like “Heart Out” and “Girls” to crunching guitar sheds and thumping synth in “The City”. Its youthful melancholy has since made way for a much darker, mature sense of identity, but every album since is laced with its influence. Another reminder of an essential life lesson: always listen to teenage girls.
9. Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee (2021)
The indie scene has often been blanketed by a kind of toxic sad boi fog; a sensibility that centres melancholy self-othering above all else. There are always outliers, however, and one of the best is Japanese Breakfast, fronted by Michelle Zauner. The group’s third album, Jubilee, is an ode to joy, a celebration of happiness and wonder born from the dark mist of grief Zauner experienced after the death of her mother in 2014. Electropop dreamscapes and heavy horn and string sections elevate the guitar-led base of the record, which acts like the weight of a helium balloon grounding it from floating away. Lead single “Be Sweet” is a standout, all airy synths and 80s exuberance, but songs like “In Hell” and “Posing For Cars” offer a delicate, lo-fi flavour. Easily one of the best indie albums of the 2020s.
8. Pixies – Doolittle (1989)
Indie rock wouldn’t exist in its current form without the Pixies. Despite existing alongside Nirvana and Sonic Youth, the group paved their own kind of sonic sucker punches, with compressed guitars and almost childlike vocals creating a kind of powder keg of energy. 1989’s Doolittle is considered today to be a benchmark of the indie scene, with crowd-pleasers like “Here Comes Your Man” mixed in with the frenetic yelps of “Debaser” and “Crackity Jones”. The album feels like the musical equivalent of trying to bottle flies, thrumming and buzzing and always at the risk of breaking free at any hint of a loose seal. The Pixie’s aural DNA can still be felt today thanks to their bold experimentation with just how much sound can fit into one single song.
7. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm (2005)
With their angular guitar riffs, brash vocals and pointed lyrics like “Stop being so American / There's a time and there's a place”, Bloc Party burst onto the scene in the mid ‘00s with a sound that felt new, exciting and fresh. Listen to Silent Alarm tracks like “Helicopter”, “She’s Hearing Voices” and “Positive Tension” today and they still pack a ferocious punch. Part post-punk, part dance-rock and art punk, Silent Alarm gave us hypnotic, rhythmic, indie guitar music aimed squarely at the dance-floor. Their phenomenal electronic-leaning follow-up A Weekend In the City could have easily made this list also, but there's something about the urgent, off-the-cuff flavour of their debut that just can't be replicated.
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell (2003)
Having to pick a favourite Yeah Yeah Yeahs album is a bit like having to pick a favourite child – hard, but not impossible if you really think about it. Their debut album Fever to Tell – the one with “Maps”, “Y Control” and “Pin” – was what put the New York indie rock trio on the map. With it's reverb-soaked DIY sound paired with Karen O's raucous yet vulnerable vocals, Fever to Tell felt exciting, urgent and mainly just really, really cool. Unlike plenty of indie albums from the ‘00s, Fever to Tell still feels like a record you’d want to stick on at a house party today. More importantly, in an endless sea of white boys with guitars, Karen O taught a generation of music fans that women can front indie bands too – and often they're even better at it.
5. Arctic Monkeys – AM (2013)
You need only listen to the opening two bars of AM by Arctic Monkeys to be immediately swept up. No 2010s album has birthed a culture quite like it, creating its own kind of microcosm of fandom that's as much an interest as it is a look and personality type. The fifth album by the already-iconic Sheffield group is jam-packed with notable hits, all meshing together into a strutting haze that makes you feel that kind of woozy drunk where you’re feeling sexy and dangerous but on the edge of tipping over. It’s a thrill. From “Do I Wanna Know?” to “R U Mine?” to “Why’d You Always Call Me When You’re High”, Arctic Monkeys may have been full of questions but none of them was whether they’d just created one of the most fundamental indie rock records of a generation. Masters of packaging their eras with distinct aesthetics, they inadvertently ushered in the inception of 2013 Tumblr fandom. The world was forever changed.
4. Pulp – Different Class (1995)
What is there to say about Pulp's fifth studio album Different Class that hasn't been said already? This was, after all, the album that gave us “Common People”, “Disco 2000” and “Something's Changed”. With their obnoxiously charismatic frontman, winking, story-like lyrics and absurdly infectious guitar riffs, Pulp ushered in a much more fun and silly era for Britpop that wasn't just Oasis and Blur pretending to go at each other in the press. Also, sorry, but I just don't think you've experienced true bliss until you've been in a British indie venue with hundreds of others sing-chanting the words: “You were the first girl at school to get breasts! And Martyn said that you were the best!”
3. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells (2001)
Before solving mysteries became a bankable part of a musician’s fandom cache, The White Stripes were out here making themselves an enigma deliberately. Were the duo, made up of Jack White and Meg White, married? Divorced? Brother and sister? People who just happened to have the same last name? Eventually, we found out (it was married, in case you were wondering), but that media scrutiny made for great creative inspiration in the shape of White Blood Cells, their third album. Recorded in less than a week, the record tipped the scales for the pair who pioneered a new sound that shunned almost all hearty bass and filled fans' heads with a dizzy spin of top notes. Spawning career-making singles “Fell In Love With A Girl” and “We’re Going To Be Friends”, White Blood Cells is all jagged edges and sharp cuts we’ve been happy to slice ourselves open to for over 20 years.
2. The Smiths – The Smiths (1984)
Look, it has to be said before any praise about The Smiths: We do not condone or agree with whatever Morrissey’s blathering on about nowadays. Now that that’s out of the way, we can dive unashamedly into the power of their 1984 self-titled debut. Unlike their contemporaries, The Smiths instantly pioneered a kind of melancholy longing, a sound steeped in forbidden desire and lust with the odd smattering of songs about the Moors murders and systemic abuse thrown in for good measure. Morrissey’s now infamous choral voice spreads over songs like soft butter, picking apart the complexities of love, sex and heartbreak with such simplicity it's almost otherworldly. Of course, it’s the album that gave “This Charming Man” to the world, introducing their knack for sneaking just the most depressing themes into jangly bops. Groups like The 1975 and The XX owe much of their DNA to The Smith’s 80s influence.
1. The Strokes – Is This It (2001)
When The Strokes dropped their debut album in 2001, there was a noisy thrum of excitement that history had been made. Over two decades on and that assertion has never been truer. Having only formed a few years prior and barely in their twenties, the group recorded the album in a Manhattan basement, utterly unaware of the impact they were about to have. A thick layer of rabid guitar licks covers Is This It like a fog as Julian Casablancas’ gruff croak fights for dominance like a stick of dynamite seconds away from blowing up. It’s a frenetic kind of claustrophobia that reflects the ethos of the early millennium, of culture moving more rapidly than it ever had and the old guard of the 90s being left in the dust for a new wave of early aughts tastemakers. Stand-out tracks like “Last Nite” and “Someday” still hold weight major weight today. It’s undeniable that artists like Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand couldn’t have existed without The Strokes and the sound Is This It ushered in, a kind of sad boi metrosexuality that’s now a universal factor of modern rock.