The 25 Best Indie Musicians to Follow on Instagram

Justin Vernon might be a gimmick Instagram user, but they are great gimmicks. Bon Iver uses outside apps to make warped images that are either goofy or kinda beautiful. He was using an app that mirrored half of a picture before, then he now he’s working with whatever program that can do this which looks like one of those old screensavers. Throw in some photos of John Deer snow plows (and how to park them), gratuitous cat pics, and some sneak peaks at his studio and his back tattoo, and this is one account worth following.

(Follow Bon Iver)

Think if Matisse and David Hockney made art on their iPhone. That’s the kind of drawings that Charlie Brand, lead singer of Miniature Tigers, does on his Instagram. There’s still life bottles of Sriracha and ketchup, a Piccasso-style self portratit, extension of Mattise’s blue nudes, and a deconstruction of the Kelvin filter, Warhol style. Everything else is well-composed black and white photography, screencaps from Seinfeld episodes, and Brand’s face superimposed on Mark McGrath’s for #TBT. One of the best Instagram accounts there is.

(Follow Charlie)

I’m not saying the indie rapper from Minneapolis Astronautalis should quit rap and become a photographer full time, I’m just saying that’s a viable option. His photos are even more impressive given the fact that they're all taken with an iPhone 4. During winter, his endless snow-covered landscapes were often accompanied with long, heartfelt messages to fans. Catch selfies of his tatted up hands (D A N G on the knuckles) and whatever curious artifacts Charles Andrew Bothwell uncovers.

(Follow Astronautalis)

Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of their melancholy music with The Simpsons references and Coolio cookbooks that makes The Antlers so great on Instagram. There are some artists who sound so tortured in their music you’re just kind of glad they’re doing fine in real life after you spent hours listening to them sing about cancer, hospice care, and putting their dog to sleep. “My plumber gave me this calendar” is one of the best comments.

(Follow The Antlers)

On their social networking, frontman Angus Andrew said, “We were interested in bringing up ideas of disinformation and the idea of almost the natural way that people feel when they get information from the internet that it’s kind of somehow true, especially if it’s coming from a band about their work immediately then it’s assumed it’s the real thing.” It’s not as serious as all that, but Liars do some nifty stuff with their 3D “L” logo, plus there’s a picture where they lined up pieces of white bread in a grid.

(Follow Liars)

How hard do you party compared to Lee? The singer of thrash-punk band Trash Talk posts copious selfies of him and his band. Lee's account from Trash Talk isn’t so much an artful account as it is a peek into the, ahem, filterless life of The Spielman. Gnarly cuts, drunken parties, hungover mornings, and the occasional kickflip, as well as co-shots with his friends in Odd Future. Good are the stoned 5 a.m. shots, best are the the shots of being held completely aloft by a crowd—and there's more than one of them.

(Follow Lee Spielman)

This is a great example of photos that are essentially pictorial extensions of a band’s music. Each one of Ruban Nielson’s kaleidoscopic photos with some kind of rainbow filter on it could be the cover of an Unknown Mortal Orchestra 7”, all psychedelic landscapes, some gear porn, an occasional doodle, and one ridiculously adorable picture of Nielson as a toddler.

(Follow Unknown Mortal Orchestra)

This is more of an honorary mention, because I’ve been following Young the Giant for since they were just getting started three years ago. They’ve got almost 160,000 followers now, and are signed to a major, but since forever these amateur Ansel Adams acolytes have been putting up dazzling landscapes from all over the world. I don’t know where they live, but I think it’s inside of a National Geographic magazine.

(Follow Young the Giant)

Welcome to one of the most vibrant and bizarre Instagram accounts courtesy of the lead singer of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound. Do you want photos of African men wearing tribal masks? Do you want old Scritti Politti tour posters? How about photos from old magazines? Out of control selfies? A picture of Sara Carter playing the autoharp? Cox is more like a surreal scrapbooker, loading old artifacts onto his account. It’s a gateway into his junk drawer, in concert with his new Deerhunter album Monomania.

(Follow Bradford)

Characteristic of Daniel Lopatin’s fascination with re-contextualizing the past into something transcendental, his Instagram is—well it’s not exactly that. But in contrast to a fun backstage photo with a lavish meal spread and bandmates, the picture of Lopatin’s government-issued dressing room is hilarious. His fascination with earthly oddities in his music also carries over to the pictures that he posts. Ghostly and deathly iconography pop up often, but in a kind of a “lol death” way that’s sort of funny. A few visual jokes require knowledge of noise artists like Black Dice and Glenn Branca, but there’s no prerequisite for a picture of six, one-gallon ziploc bags of barbeque and an empty bottle of Hennessy on the ground. That’s just art.

(Follow Daniel Lopatin)

Ariel Pink is known for his live show eccentricity, slumping over the front of the stage like an unmanned marionette barely holding on to the mic, but what he’s less known for are his Dali meets psycho-sexual Bruegel punk sketches. Does it give insight into the mind of the prolific glo-fi pop star? Well if you count a sketch of woman whose eyes turn into her breasts and a man standing over another person-thing his penis entering this figure’s—I don’t know. Just look at the drawing above and groove to the song below and see how the two things collide in your brain.

(Follow Ariel Pink)

One of the funniest accounts right now is Har Mar Superstar. The crooning, almost-too-sexual R&B artist has it down. There’s no filter work, no fancy landscapes (okay there’s some) but mostly it’s things found in men’s rooms (razor blades, other men’s rooms) and the broken down sadness of life on the road, like two four-wheelers waiting at a gas station or the Que Sera Casual Dining and Lounge being closed.

(Follow Har Mar Superstar)

Though it may not be as delighful as his Twitter feed, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend’s effete, if infrequent posts come sprinkled with self-referential commentary, like the mansard roof from Belgium, or noting Eddie Murphy’s shawl-neck sweater in Coming to America, one Koenig is often seen wearing. His selfie game is, well, spectacular, as he is the self-appointed “Lord Selfie III aka Pope Vanitas,” and his few screen-caps from his mother are possibly the sweetest thing. Koenig posts on average once a week with huge gaps, but it’s even worth going through every thing he’s already posted.

(Follow Ezra Koening)

What’s great about Michael Stipe's account is that you could see his evolution—you could see him get better. The R.E.M. frontman started with some pretty lame close-up explorations every-day objects (classic rookie movie), he moved on to pictures of flowers in trees, then got to a themed series of photos (his own Blue Period), and finally to a screenshot of a "Dear John" letter announcing his swift retirement. He went out on top, at least, and it’s worth looking at an artist’s oeuvre just to see what could have been. Like most artists, you only really appreciate the genius after they've gone.

(Follow Michael Stipe)

The slinky, noir production of Nosaj Thing also seems to be a theme with his account—a skyscraper in the night, a black and white moving crosswalk that leads to infinity, a birds-eye view of a snowy landscape (Brannan-filtered for extra drama), and a “lonely moon” isolated in the sky (okay, hahaha on that last one). He’s got an eye for composition, mostly black and white, a coupla re-grams of Hopper and Mondrian paintings, light self-promotion, and night-time dispatches from cities around the world.

(Follow Nosaj Thing)

Between pictures of Pablo Escobar’s abandoned house and tirades against her critics, Chan Marshall of Cat Power uses Instagram as her main form of outreach to her fans. It’s a diary of her life on tour, and her home in Florida. She’s unfortunately deleted a lot of her old photos, but it’s a wonderful photo-blog behind one of our most accomplished songwriters—plus she apparently got close enough to one of Pablo Escobar’s houses to take a picture of the path leading up to it?

(Follow Cat Power)

All of those times you’re like drunk or high and you stop yourself from posting a weird thing that probably won’t be good the next day, well Nathan Williams of Wavves doesn’t have that barrier. “My hotel bed looks like a white dude with a mustache” he claims, wildly. There’s a series of photos of people who look like his bandmate Steven Pope culminating in a pile of hay (not inaccurate), poignant screenshots from Final Fantasy 7, and candid pictures of dudes with mohawks and corpse paint wearing cut-off button downs.

(Follow Nathan Williams)

Up-and-coming Canadian producer has got the one-liner comment down pat. This photo of the guy with the two left hands is terrific. The clumsy shot looking out of an airplane window to a snowy runway with rain running down the pane is perfect, a picture of old tombstones captioned “The Gucci store,” pointing out the absurdities of Skymall products (especially the “written in stone” one) is hilarious. You’ll get some gear porn, some architecture from Budapest, and an amazing photo of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic as a platinum cassette.

(Follow Jacques Greene)

Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear keeps it simple. He likes to marvel at things on Instagram—his photos of the cities that he visits are always vibrant and spectacular, taking amazing pictures of gardens in Japan and somehow making Milwaukee look gorgeous (no shots I’m from there). If you like “stunning” with filters and liberal but efective use of the brightness effect, this is your account.

(Follow Ed Droste)

As a founding member of Lightning Bolt and former member of Black Dice, Hisham A. Bharoocha now works on a solo project called Soft Circle and does work as a visual artist in New York. He does a great job of getting candids from people around New York, like a family outside Build-A-Bear eating yogurt kind of staring off, or a dad taking a picture of some cherry blossoms while his two kids play video games on a bench. But mostly it’s fantastic photography—the shot of the little girl on the motorcycle in Burma probably deserves a better medium than Instagram.

(Follow Soft Circle)

Dent May's Instagram is a veritable haven of unlikely juxtapositions. Well, there’s the picture of Mac DeMarco doing the classic Buffalo Bill tuck-back, and then there’s maybe the best picture anyone has ever taken with Waka Flocka Flame, a couple of alpaca’s gettin it on, and an exclusive photo of Dent May’s Record Store Day release (it is an aluminum tin of left-over refried beans). He likes the occasional ironic tchotchke and #tourlife.

(Follow Dent May)

“Ever consider photography as more than just Instagram? The textures that you capture are as weird and awesome as your music. Keep it up. I enjoy watching and listening.” This comment on one of Avey Tare's photos just about says it all. All of his shots are curious, rarely humorous and rarely commented upon, but they all reflect the kind of fascination that Animal Collective and Avey Tare put into his music. When you have an account like this, it isn’t really trying to be anything else than a notebook to use for later.

(Follow Avey Tare)

Along with being one of the best drummers in music right now, Brian Chippendale, of both Lightning Bolt and Black Pus, is also a prolific artist, often posting old prints, sketches, and bits of comics to his account. Along with his art, Chippendale posts up really beautiful photos of odd objects, never satisfied with something that’s just simply normal. Plus there’s a gnarly picture of his hand after a show. If you want, you can buy prints of his work here.

(Follow Brian Chippendale)

It’s always summer in Bleached’s instagram account, or that’s how it seems. Of all the instagram accounts, Bleached may be the most typical—selfies, nights out, some food, some tour pics—but about one hundred times more glamourous when seen through the eyes of the Clavin sisters. There’s so much life to what they post—so much love and fun for each other they can’t not make you smile. Sometimes it’s a busted lip, or busted something (they get into a lot of accidents it seems), or sometimes it’s one of them voguing for the camera, but underneath the filters it’s always sunny.

(Follow Bleached)

I really like the Paranthetical Girls account but I can’t quite put my finger on why—which of course is what makes me like it even more. It’s really twee, with a kind of wan, quirky sense of humor that extends nicely from Parenthetical Girls experimental chamber pop. I love the pictures lately of the back of Amber’s head with her green bow. It’s one of those accounts that seems inextricably connected to the band’s music.

(Follow Paranthetical Girls)