Sweaty, Slutty, and Covered in Cheap Beer – The Resurgence of Indie Sleaze

Ready or not, electroclash has been back for a while, and I've got the fever to tell. Inside, my (podcast) deep dive on Yeah Yeah Yeahs, plus a playlist of the sleaziest revivalists of the genre.

A version of this post was published on July 15, 2024. It has been updated with a new introduction and additional highlights have been added from the playlist. The corresponding playlist itself has been refreshed with 12 new songs. Spotify links have been replaced with Bandcamp wherever possible.

I don’t know when I became an authority¹ on indie sleaze, but I’m absolutely thrilled about it.

Last month, I had the immense pleasure of joining the hosts of music podcast This One Goes to 11 to wax nostalgic about one of my favorite albums, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever to Tell. I’ll let them describe the results:

Those other music podcasts out there? They don't love you like we love you. And we were happy to make time for our new friend - and this week's guest - Gabbie from New Bands for Old Heads. She brought us back to the dawn of Urban Outfitters profiting off of the art-rock indie-sleaze movement of the early 2000s with 2003's debut album from Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell. We talk about where this album sits in the evolution of rock music, what has made Karen O such an icon, and what's going on with all that gatekeeping in the world of music criticism. We also talk about Philadelphia with the kind of specificity that definitely won't make people who have never been there feel left out. Give this one a listen - you just might be sweating in the winter.

Spending an hour buzzing about my college days and my unending love for Karen O. reminded me how much time and love and effort I had put into finding bands that were working on recreating the sound that we’re now calling indie sleaze.

But when I went to go dig up this playlist to reshare it with you, I had a funny realization — I had never mentioned Yeah Yeah Yeahs as an inspiration for any of the new artists I pulled in.

This wasn’t purposeful, not like with my exclusion of, say, the Strokes (if I’ve ever been gatekeepy about anything, it’s this — what an incredible band, but they just don’t make sense to me as indie sleaze).

via INDIE IDOL <3

I’m embarrassed to say it’s entirely because I haven’t actually been able to find a modern analogue for the early Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound. Even Yeah Yeah Yeahs themselves don’t sound like that anymore.

Whether they belong in this retroactively-named genre in the first place is up for debate. The playlist I’ve pulled together for you below, as you’ll see, is essentially modern electroclash, which Yeah Yeah Yeahs were not.

But they do belong in this discussion. And either way, the playlist rips, if I do say so myself.

Who’s the modern equivalent of “Date With the Night”-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs?