Bed Heads

Clairo and the fuzzy, D.I.Y. sounds of bedroom pop.

- Carrie Battan

At some point in the past decade, the bedroom replaced the garage as the primary spiritual escape hatch for suburban teen-agers who wanted to express themselves through music. Oversized amps and hand-me-down drum sets were usurped by Wi-Fi, laptops, and home-recording software. The angst and the noise of garage rock gave way to more subdued sounds, as young musicians began making the kind of hushed, Internet-facing electronic pop that could be kept secret from adults, rather than weaponized against them. This insular form of music eventually crystallized into a scene called “bedroom pop”—a digitally connected cohort of musicians with its own stars, styles, and dedicated playlists. (It also shifted the meaning of the word “bedroom” in music away from the sensual and toward the cerebral.) Like many terms used to characterize micro-genres, bedroom pop is a misnomer—not all of it is recorded in bedrooms, and most of it is not popular—but it is an apt description of a woozy lo-fi style generated from self-imposed isolation.