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Historically, indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and England in the 1970s. Originally, indie rock was used to describe independent record labels, the term was later associated with the music they produced and was originally used interchangeably with alternative rock or "guitar pop rock".In the 1980s, the use of the term "indie" (or "indie rock") began to shift from a reference to record companies to describe the style of music produced on punk and post-punk labels. Meanwhile in the 1990s, grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK entered the mainstream, and the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning. The term "indie rock" became associated with bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status.Then in the late 1990s, indie rock developed several subgenres and related styles, including lo-fi, noise pop, emo, slowcore, post-rock, to math rock. Until the 2000s, changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the internet allowed a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success, which raised questions about its meaning as a term.In the early 2000s, a new band playing a simple version of rock guitar and back-to-basics emerged into the mainstream. The commercial breakthrough of this scene was led by four bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives, and The Vines. Emo also entered mainstream culture in the early 2000s.Aesthetically, indie rock is characterized by a careful balance between accessibility of pop with noise, experimentation with pop music formulas, sensitive lyrics masked by irony, attention to "authenticity", and simple depictions of men or women.