Dolewave

Initially used online as an in-joke to describe an indie scene in Melbourne involving Twerps, Dick Diver and other groups, the term has since been applied by music critics to a wider range of Australian acts that share a DIY ethic and a "peculiarly and recognisably Australasian sound",[1] such as Courtney Barnett and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever.

[5] According to music critic Everett True, dolewave's "recalcitrant and ramshackle" sound mirrors the "makeshift venue culture" that many of the bands find themselves in: "underneath decrepit Queenslanders, in open park spaces, in warehouses, rundown pubs, front rooms of share houses".

[8] That year, one of the site's journalists, Doug Wallen, coined the term "New Melbourne Jangle" to describe a range of jangly indie pop bands from Melbourne—among them Twerps, Dick Diver and Scott & Charlene's Wedding—which wrote songs about outsider youth and contemporary life in urban Australia.

[8] Everett True cited fellow music critic Shaun Prescott's review of School of Radiant Living's 2013 self-titled LP as a turning point for dolewave, one where the "tossed-off phrase" became a legitimate genre once he "[sorted] out in his own head as to what the word actually represented".

[1] Prescott praises the title track of Dick Diver's 2011 debut album New Start Again as a quintessential dolewave song—"a paean to the years when artists and outsiders could exist without being ‘creatives’, when unprofitable, art-for-its-own-sake wasn't necessarily a contract with poverty.

[14] In the years immediately after dolewave's popularisation, many of the genre's "unwilling flag-bearers" seemed to reject it by eschewing its signature jangly guitars and "true blue" references in favour of a "more mature, polished sound".

[10] Prescott writes:[2] ‘Dolewave’ is a caustic riff on the few virtuous characteristics of white colonial Australia, the ones our politicians are adamant still remain, the ones we affectionately satirise, and the ones which no Kenny can bring back to life.