Now that hipsters are the new hotness and indie bands get airplay on nationally televised commercials without anyone blinking an eye, indie rock finds itself going through an interesting new stage of its life cycle as a genre. Although it’s not quite as irrelevant as, say, “alternative rock” as a label for describing a type of music, it’s also true that nearly everything that’s reached a certain level of popularity in North America has been labeled “indie.” Thus, for the past little while, indie music has endured a series of stylistic tidal waves: college rock, lo-fi, math rock, emo, electroclash, and finally dancepunk, with tons of smaller movements peppered liberally throughout that timeline.

Radio 4 had the good fortune to release Gotham! just as dancepunk began to gain traction. The Rapture released “House Of Jealous Lovers” in 2002, thus ensuring that for the next year at least, indie kids would dance feverishly (if self-consciously) to at least one song during the pre-show playlist at concerts. !!!’s 2001 effort included the spastic “Intensify,” the closest thing dancepunk had to a gospel song, thanks to the crazy vocal breakdown during the song’s bridge.

By both those standards, Radio 4 was fairly demure; while there was something irresistable about tracks like “Our Town,” it wasn’t so extreme or different that people who’d never go near a dancefloor could still rock out to it. And “Our Town” had a secret weapon up its sleeve: arguably it’s also the easiest and most natural song of the three to dance to. Not quite as spare and standoff-ish as “House of Jealous Lovers,” and with a simpler, more infectious beat than “Intensify,” “Our Town” should’ve been the perfect gateway song for indie rock fans into the world of dancepunk.

Of course, Radio 4 was never able to capitalize fully on its early successes, and essentially sealed its fate with 2004’s atrocious and self-parodying Stealing of a Nation. And now the game’s completely different: now that the indiscriminate mass of influences and musical touchstones that is indie music has gone mainstream, there’s a new problem afoot. No longer are there big trends that sweep through the indie community like wildfire. If anything, the trend today is the hipster image, more so than ever before. And while I’m glad we don’t have to chase down the Next Big Thing, the question remains: if indie music even exists anymore as a distinct genre of music, where does it go next?