Iocane for the soul

When the groundwork for the country's do-it-yourself network was laid in the '80s, geography played a bigger role than it does now. Tape-trading and zines connected the dots between cities a lot more slowly than the internet. Since the cyber age has helped erase the starkest geographic-based distinctions between independent music scenes, the term “indie rock” nowadays refers more to a convoluted subset of styles than a particular business model.