Dead Oceans is an American independent record label formed in 2007 and based in Bloomington, Indiana.

[1] In 2007, Phil Waldorf founded Dead Oceans with Chris Swanson.

[2] Swanson suggested the name Dead Oceans, which came from the lyrics of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" (1963).

[3][4] Chris' brother Ben Swanson, Darius Van Arman, and Jonathan Cargill of Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar also helped to found the label.

[8][9][10] In 2018, Dead Oceans was listed as #7 on Paste magazine's top-10 record labels of 2018.