Indie stands for independent. Indie bands are a genre of alternative comprised of obscure bands not signed to a major record label. They are either not signed or signed to an indie label. Althought there is always debate about whether or not indie bands that make it big are still indie. Anyway, it's practically impossible to coherently define indie, the lines are very fuzzy. If you really want to know what indie is you have to listen to the music. What distinguishes indie from emo is that indie is not whining about being dumped. Also indie is comprised itself of many different genres.
There's a couple quizes for fun. Then a list of indie bands. They should link to a website about the band. I couldn't find a lot of official band sites and some of them were kind of crappy... so yeah, some of the sites aren't "official band websites", might be a fan site, might be a review, you know, something to give you some info on the band.. Some of the websites are really sweet and others really really suck. So yeah. Have fun. It was a lot of work finding them all though, so check some out.
I couldn't find any fun indie fashion things either. If you know of one, let me know. Oh and I am just learning about indie so these bands I got off lists off other websites and if they are wrong or bad examples, let me know. Also if one of the links doesn't work- please let me know. The pink ones are ones that I actually have songs by on my computer, and the green ones I was able to find songs by them but there weren't enough sources to download.. I tried to get music from as many as possible, I'll tell you what I think when I get the chance to listen to them all.
Indie pop cred evaluator
Ani DiFranco
Army of Me
Belle and Sebastian
Braid
Bright Eyes
Built to Spill
Catch That Beat
Cat Power
The Cinema Eye
The Circulatory System
Clairmel
Codeine
The Concubines
Cooper Temple Clause
Corm
Death Cab for Cutie
Deerhoof
Dinosaur Jr.
Dirty Three
The Dismemberment Plan
Dolour
Don Cabellero
Elliot Smith
Enon
Frank Black and the Catholics
Fugazi
Girls Against Boys
Guided By Voices
Helium
Interpol
Karp
Knapsack
Kool Keith
Lake Trout
Las Pesadillas
Lola Ray
Mercury Rev
Modest Mouse
Moonraker
My Secret Service
The New Pornographers
The Nothing
Outsmarting Simon
Postal Service
The Promise Ring
The Rachels
Rodan
Sandpit
Sebadoh
Silver Jews
Sleater Kinney
Slint
Sonic Youth
Sparklehorse
The Strokes
Sunny Day Real Estate
Superchunk
Thursday
Torture Shoe
Ugly Cassanova
Unwound
Velvet Underground
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Yo La Tengo
Zoppo
Amazing lists of band websites:
List 1
List 2