One thing that remained constant throughout my teenage years were several micro-obsessions with these aforementioned generic post-Britpop era artists, many of which I can group into phases that directly correlate to all memories I have of that period. There’s an excitement that comes with finding music not actively rotating on KISS-FM radio stations or synapse-frying top 40 retail mixes it feels like harboring a secret, as if knowing them makes you a part of an in-crowd of people who aren’t passive in their media consumption.

Perhaps it was the relief of hearing clean guitar music with big choruses that appealed to us, or the accessibility of that sound in the first place, which felt adjacent to pop and vaguely reminiscent of the music our parents and older brothers listened to- Enema of the State or Justice or The Cult. When I speak with friends of mine who grew up in the same era of the internet as I did-the slow dissolution of Myspace, the primitive predecessor to stan Twitter, which was then referred to as “floating head icon” Twitter, and the calm before Yahoo bought Tumblr-The Kooks, Two Door Cinema Club and their generic post-Britpop era peers are usually mentioned as bands that opened up a door to whatever their personal definition of “indie” is. At least the sentiment stands in this copycat tweet. Somewhere on the internet there exists a tweet that says something along the lines of “If The Kooks or Two Door Cinema Club weren’t your indie converter bands, who even are you?” I’ve tried again and again to find the original, but I think it’s now lost to the ether. Welcome to our new Gateways column, where Paste writers and editors explore the taste-defining albums, artists, songs or shows that proved to be personal “gateways” into a broader genre, music scene or an artist’s catalogue at-large-for better or worse.

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