Anti-Folk
Anti-folk is a raw, punk-spirited take on folk music that swaps earnestness for humor, bluntness and deliberately rough playing.
It began in New York City in the mid-1980s, among songwriters who were shut out of the established Greenwich Village folk clubs. Songs are usually just voice and acoustic guitar, recorded simply, with witty, awkward or confessional lyrics and little concern for polish. The scene later settled at the SideWalk Cafe in the East Village, and the name was taken up in London in the 2000s. It is scrappier and more ironic than indie folk.
Artists it is known for: The Moldy Peaches, Jeffrey Lewis, Kimya Dawson, Regina Spektor.
- Family
- Alternative & Indie
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- New York City, mid-1980s
- Also called
- antifolk
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 3%
About 2,200 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have anti-folk among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Anti-Folk artists
Neutral Milk Hotel
Pavement
Beck
The Microphones
Silver Jews
The Magnetic Fields
Built To Spill
The Dresden Dolls
of Montreal
They Might Be Giants
The anti-folk 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.