Noise Pop
Noise pop is catchy pop songwriting played with loud, distorted, feedback-laden guitars.
It emerged in Britain in the mid-1980s, when the Jesus and Mary Chain combined sweet 1960s-style melodies with harsh guitar noise, while American alternative bands were mixing pop songs with distortion and feedback. Songs are short and tuneful underneath the fuzz, and the vocals are often soft and half-buried. It is more melodic than noise rock and rougher than indie pop, and it laid the ground for shoegaze.
Artists it is known for: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Yo La Tengo, Black Tambourine.
- Family
- Alternative & Indie
- On Spotify
- No longer returned by Spotify’s API
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United Kingdom, mid-1980s
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 3%
About 2,800 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have noise pop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Noise Pop artists
Eyedress
my bloody valentine
Sonic Youth
STOMACH BOOK
Dinosaur Jr.
The Microphones
Silver Jews
The Flaming Lips
Stereolab
Black Dresses
The noise pop 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.