indie

For runs that feel like something, not just cardio

By Rob Gordon

Metro in February, still had my coat on for the first three songs. That's the thing about indie shows—you're sweating from proximity and anticipation before the music even starts. Running with indie does the same thing. You're two minutes in and already somewhere else entirely, somewhere that matters more than your split time.

Here's why indie works for running better than it has any right to: it refuses to be one thing. You've got TV On The Radio showing up on four different playlists here, and they could soundtrack a recovery jog or the last angry mile of a tempo run depending on which track hits. Wolf Alice appears twice because they understand dynamics—the way a song can simmer and then detonate, exactly like mile six when your legs remember they're supposed to be tired but your head says otherwise.

Indie never panders. It doesn't have a marketing meeting about optimal BPM for target heart rate zones. It just exists, urgently, and if you can sync your stride to that urgency, you've got something better than a scientifically optimized playlist. You've got a soundtrack that treats running like it actually feels—intimate and epic at the same time, lonely but connected to something bigger.

I keep coming back to indie on runs for the same reason I keep defending it at the store: it respects your intelligence. It knows you're not running to escape yourself, you're running to figure yourself out. The best indie tracks—the ones that end up on these playlists—they don't resolve neatly. They leave you with questions. And questions are excellent fuel for the Lakefront Trail at 6 AM when you're trying to remember why you signed up for this race in the first place.

Eleven playlists worth of indie running music. That's eleven different arguments for why this matters. Start with any of them. Wear a coat for the first three songs if you want.

32 playlists

Top 10 Indie Running Songs

These tracks appear across multiple curated indie running playlists.

  1. 1. Cannonball — The Breeders
  2. 2. 1940 - AmpLive Remix — Amp Live
  3. 3. 6's to 9's — Big Wild
  4. 4. 80's Men — Bummers
  5. 5. A Heavy Abacus — The Joy Formidable
  6. 6. Adult Diversion — Alvvays
  7. 7. Age of Consent - 2015 Remaster — New Order
  8. 8. All Of This — The Naked And Famous
  9. 9. Anemone — The Brian Jonestown Massacre
  10. 10. Animal — Caroline Rose

Frequently Asked Questions

What pace should I run when listening to indie?

Wrong question. Indie doesn't dictate pace—it shapes mood. TV On The Radio works at 8-minute miles and 10-minute miles because it's not metronomic garbage designed for treadmills. That said, most indie sits in the 120-160 BPM sweet spot, which means easy to moderate pace for most runners. But I've done threshold work to Wolf Alice and recovery runs to the same band. The music adapts because it's actually dynamic. If you're trying to match your footstrike to the snare hit on every single beat, you're missing the point entirely.

Is indie too slow for tempo runs or intervals?

Look, if you think indie is all jangly sad boys with acoustic guitars, you stopped paying attention in 2004. Half the stuff on these playlists has more energy than whatever algorithmic EDM garbage Spotify thinks you want. TV On The Radio alone can power a tempo run—have you actually listened to them? The trick with indie for hard efforts is choosing tracks that build, that have momentum baked into the songwriting. Indie doesn't hit you over the head with a 180 BPM kick drum, but it absolutely has the intensity for interval work if you're not a coward about it.

Which indie artists should I start with for running?

TV On The Radio appears on four playlists here for a reason—they've got range, urgency, and they never phone it in. Start there. Wolf Alice shows up twice because they understand loud-quiet-loud dynamics, which is basically interval training in song form. But honestly? Just pick one of these eleven playlists and run with it. They're titled like mixtapes because they're sequenced like mixtapes—someone made choices about flow and arc. CHICAGO 2 LONDON, RUNAWAY, whatever speaks to you. Trust the curation. That's the whole point of indie anyway—trust someone's taste.

What makes indie different from indie-rock for running?

Indie is the bigger tent. Indie-rock is the specific thing with guitars and verse-chorus-verse structures—your Strokes, your Franz Ferdinand. Indie as a category holds everything that exists outside the major label machinery: indie-pop, indie-electronic, whatever TV On The Radio is. For running, it means more variety in the same headspace. You get textural shifts, tempo changes, actual songwriting. If indie-rock is black coffee, indie is the whole menu at a shop that roasts its own beans and has opinions about water temperature. Both work. One has more options when you're logging serious mileage.

Can I do long runs to indie or will I get bored?

Bored? With eleven full playlists of material? The problem with long runs isn't the music getting boring, it's you getting bored with yourself around mile nine. Indie is perfect for long runs exactly because it's not monotonous. These playlists have sequencing, dynamics, peaks and valleys—they're mixtapes, not just BPM-sorted algorithm dumps. A great indie playlist for a long run gives you movements, like a symphony, except one that Championship Vinyl would actually stock. Put on MIXTAPE 1 or COAST and let it unspool. If you get bored, the problem isn't the music.