Imagine walking past a venue with its doors open, and you hear ghostly weeps and muffled singing. You may think the venue is haunted by some noisy ghosts, but actually it's a band performing this beautiful sounding music called shoegaze.

Shoegaze is a subgenre of music mainly coming from noise music and indie music. It has a distinct sound that comes from obscured vocals and a group of guitar pedals that layer and change the guitar's sound.

It is commonly referred to as shoegaze due to the guitarists looking at their feet to change pedals out while playing. The pedals are kept on a device called the pedal board which at the time were handmade and could hold as many different pedals depending on the size. The first bands to pioneer this type of sound were believed to be the Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine.

My Bloody Valentine’s discography is heavily praised by critics and their 1991 album, “Loveless,” has been name dropped as one of the best works to come out of this subgenre.

Many other notable bands of the shoegaze subgenre are Slowdive, M83, Ride, and Sonic Youth. The influence of shoegaze to later 90’s alternative rock is such a huge part of why it has its dark tones and different pedal experimentation.

This is also one of the most obscure and largest genres that have originated from the United Kingdom during the late 70’s and early 80’s. Many bands have experimented with pedals due to the impact of these shoegaze bands.

Without this key building block in today's music, a lot of what we hear today would be very different.