Inside the Online “Indie” Music Boom

witty’s charting a different path for this nebulous cluster. On the 20-year-old’s electrifying album #wings, nearly every track sounds like he started without any clue how it would end. “She” dreams up a cosmic pluggnb canvas for TJAYY before ditching the idea and unleashing a chiptune breakdown worthy of a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon boss fight. “I make my music really fucking loud because it’s the only time where I can feel immersed in something,” he says of his sound, which he calls “cryy.” “It allows me to think and feel like a person for a little bit. When I’m outside, there’s nothing going through my brain, just fried.”

witty says he grew up listening to Pokémon soundtracks and that it was pluggnb, not classical training or a jazz music education, that taught him how to write chord progressions. He’s also obsessed with video games, particularly the cartoonish fighting game Brawlhalla, which he’s played professionally since age 14. Under the handle STING RAY, he’s won thousands of dollars at tournaments and been one of the top 15 players for the last five years—even reaching number two in the world. “I feel like the gaming got me good at music,” he says. “I looked at it through the perspective of improving in a game.” One way to interpret his work is through the lens of video game music, which he went to Berklee College of Music to study before he was kicked out. VGM treats vocals and instruments like elements to manipulate and mash up, emphasizing chaos that synchronizes with in-game clicks and actions. “the light left my iris” reminds me of the kind of epic symphony that would suit a cutscene.

bunii, another leader of the scene, grew up listening to ayowitty and now works with him actively. The 17-year-old convinced his hero to collaborate after he saw his music on a repost channel. His solo music is much more guitar-forward, all math rock freakouts and intricate chord progressions. He lists Paramore, MCR, American Football, and Japanese rockers like susquatch and The Cabs as fixations. But even the most analog songs shimmer with producer tags: BASTARDS! Before getting into the guitar, bunii started making beats after hearing the pluggnb of Autumn! and Genius’ beat deconstruction videos.

This so-called indie music is delightfully immature and cracked at the seams, recorded in that climactic sliver of adolescence when you’re not a clueless kid but also not so old that you’re jaded. Many of the artists are self-taught. “Whenever I’m in my room, there’s always a guitar in my hand,” says bunii. In high school, which he just graduated from, he developed distinct chord progressions by rewiring elements from his favorite jazz pieces. Parts of the skyscraping “grand mal” came from Kenny Dorham’s jazz standard “Blue Bossa.”