Alternative Dance
Alternative dance mixes alternative or indie rock with electronic dance music, combining guitars and song-based writing with synthesizers and club beats.
It grew out of British post-punk and new wave in the early 1980s, when bands began using sequencers, drum machines and ideas from synth-pop, house and club music. Tracks keep a band feel and conventional vocals but are built for the dance floor. It takes in the baggy sound of the Madchester scene and is sometimes called indie dance.
Artists it is known for: New Order, Primal Scream, LCD Soundsystem.
- Family
- Alternative & Indie
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United Kingdom, early 1980s
- Also called
- indie dance
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 7%
About 5,600 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have alternative dance among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Alternative Dance artists
Crystal Castles
Empire Of The Sun
MGMT
Justice
LCD Soundsystem
The Avalanches
Fcukers
Santigold
Phoenix
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The alternative dance artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.