Meanings
- derogatoryuncountableA genre of British indie rock music in the late 2000s and early 2010s, typically defined by high-energy guitars, pretentious lyrics and use of regional accents; indie rock music perceived as unambitious, stale and commercial.
The View were a Libertines-adjacent landfill indie band from Dundee with a few hit singles. Although music buffs will no doubt recoil in horror here, their hit single, “Superstar Tradesman”, really resonated with me.
2023 February 14, Dan Evans, A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petite Bourgeoisie, Watkins Media Limited, →ISBN2 more examples
These have focused variously on the abysmal quality of its 'landfill indie' variant, its alleged takeover by privately-educated nu-folkers, and its almost total failure to respond to an increasingly harsh rightwards turn in British politics
2013 March 11, Rhian E. Jones, Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender, John Hunt Publishing, →ISBN, page 1994For example, Robinson writes that the 'Godfathers of landfill Indie', like Razorlight, the Pigeon Detectives and the Wombats, are doing for the new generation of indie-guitar bands what Menswear and Sleeper did for Britpop.
2013 January 28, Professor Andy Bennett, Professor Jon Stratton, Britpop and the English Music Tradition, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., →ISBN, page 165
Origin
Coined by English music journalist Andrew Harrison in a 2007 review in The Word magazine, suggesting the indie music scene as a large expanse of rubbish.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
landfill indie. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/landfill%20indie
“landfill indie.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/landfill%20indie. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “landfill indie,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/landfill%20indie.
Source: landfill indie on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.