Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion

by Chris DeVille

Overview

The definitive history of 21st century indie rock—from Iron & Wine and Death Cab for Cutie to Phoebe Bridgers and St. Vincent—and how the genre shifted the musical landscape and shaped a generation

Maybe you caught a few exhilarating seconds of “Teen Age Riot” on a nearby college radio station while scanning the FM dial in your parents’ car. Maybe your friend invited you to a shabby local rock club and you ended up having a religious experience with Neutral Milk Hotel. Perhaps you were scandalized and tantalized upon sneaking Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville from an older sibling’s CD collection, or you vowed to download every Radiohead song you could find on Limewire because they were the favorite band of the guy you had a major crush on.

However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior. In Such Great Heights, music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming rocks the industry and changes music forever. DeVille covers the gamut of bands—like Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, LCD Soundsystem, Haim, Pavement, and Imogen Heap—and in the vein of Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties, touches on staggering pop culture moments like sharing music recommendations via AOL Instant Messenger and the life-changing OC soundtrack.

Nerdy, fun, and a time machine for millennials, Such Great Heights is about how subculture becomes pop culture, how capitalism consumes what's “cool,” about who gets to define what's hip and how, and how an “underground” genre shaped our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250363381
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	141,530
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Chris DeVille is the managing editor at Stereogum, where he has written extensively about the full spectrum of indie music for the last ten years. In 2014, he launched The Week In Pop, a column exploring mainstream music from an indie fan’s perspective, and he has profiled bands like Tame Impala and Run The Jewels. Chris has also been featured in outlets like The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone and prominent digital outlets like The Ringer, Deadspin, and The Verge. He lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

"In the future, when the history of early 21st century indie rock is taught in schools, children will need a textbook to educate them in the ways of The Shins, Death Cab For Cutie, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And those adorable cybernetic babes decked out in space suits will reach for one learned text: Chris DeVille's Such Great Heights." —Steven Hyden, author of There Was Nothing You Could Do and Long Road

"Chris's book is much more than just nostalgia for the remembered aughts. It's a valuable document of an era that transformed the way we think about and consume music and culture." —Bill Barnwell, ESPN writer and host of The Bill Barnwell Show

From the Publisher