US V. THEM HC THE AGE OF INDIE MUSIC AND A DECADE IN NEW YORK (2004-2014)

A sweeping, in-depth history of the Brooklyn music scene over a decade in Bloomberg's New York – told by Ronen Givony, an author and concert producer with a front-row view.

In the tradition of Just Kids and Our Band Could Be Your Life, Us v. Them traces the generation of young artists who flocked to Brooklyn in the mid-2000s: a small but seismic scene that formed under a billionaire mayor, endless wars, and a music industry on the brink. Between improvised promoters and unlicensed venues on the Williamsburg waterfront, they fused noise and pop – some becoming surprisingly famous, many others flaring up briefly and disappearing, relics of an unusually fertile moment: the age of indie, today often dismissed as a marketing term.

Drawing on reporting, research, and interviews with musicians, industry insiders, and figures from Pitchfork, Vice, Scion, and the Red Bull Music Academy, Us v. Them examines the rise and fall of indie music in a post-Napster landscape – shaped by sweeping changes in technology, politics, economics, journalism, and patronage.

At once a social history and an eyewitness account of an unlikely decade, this book offers a critical analysis of what indie music was, is, and could be again in New York City.