Spreading Hope Through Independent Music Since 2000.
Indie Vision Music is an independent music publication covering Christian punk, Christian rock, Christian emo, Christian ska, Christian metal, Christian hardcore, and independent faith-based music since 2000.
But Indie Vision Music didn’t begin as a music publication. It began as an idea to put the Christian underground in one place.
Long before streaming services, social media feeds, Bandcamp, Spotify playlists, and algorithms determined how people discovered new music, Indie Vision Music was connecting listeners with independent artists the old-fashioned way: one CD, one tape, one record, one band, and one listener at a time.
And even before Indie Vision Music existed, the story had already begun.
Before IVM: Church Rooms, Clubs, and the Southern California Underground
For founder Brandon Jones, the roots of Indie Vision Music go back to the mid-1990s and Southern California’s independent Christian music scene.
At just 17 years old, Brandon began booking and promoting bands wherever someone would give them a room to play — small church youth rooms, church sanctuaries, clubs, and all-ages venues. Anywhere young bands could plug in their guitars, set up a drum kit, and reach a few more people.
These weren’t major tours backed by giant marketing campaigns. They were grassroots shows built from photocopied flyers, phone calls, friendships, church communities, word of mouth, record-store discoveries, and people who genuinely loved underground music.
This was a time when finding your next favorite band might mean buying a demo after a show, discovering a CD in the corner of a Christian bookstore, picking up a compilation because you recognized one band on it, or hearing something incredible because a friend insisted you listen.
Brandon eventually moved from booking shows into the record industry, working with Slingshot Records, which later became Screaming Giant Records, in A&R and artist management.
That opportunity placed him directly inside the independent Christian punk and alternative music world and gave him experience discovering, promoting, signing, and working with bands including Officer Negative and others connected to the growing Southern California scene.
By 1998, Brandon stepped away from that work to focus on marriage and family. But music never really left.
A couple of years later, the next chapter began.
July 4, 2000 — Indie Vision Music Is Born
Indie Vision Music officially launched on July 4, 2000.
The name represented exactly what Brandon wanted the project to become: a vision focused on independent music.
The original Indie Vision Music was an online Christian music webstore, created to bring difficult-to-find underground Christian music together in one place.
IVM stocked CDs, tapes, vinyl, and other music from independent artists and labels alongside better-known releases from the larger Christian alternative music world. The focus, however, was always on discovery.
There were records from established labels, but there were also bands almost nobody had heard of yet. There were independent releases, demos, small-label records, underground punk, hardcore, ska, emo, rock, and metal — whatever deserved an audience.
The idea was simple: make underground Christian music easier to find, keep the prices low, give people plenty of extras, and introduce listeners to bands they might never discover anywhere else.
IVM wasn’t a corporate music retailer. It was one guy running an independent store because he loved the music.
Brandon handled virtually everything himself — purchasing inventory, maintaining the website, filling orders, promoting artists, answering customers, shipping packages, discovering new bands, and keeping the whole operation moving.
Find independent music. Support it. Share it.
March 2003 — Indie Vision Music Becomes a Label
After nearly three years as an independent online music store, Indie Vision Music took another step forward.
In March 2003, Indie Vision Music officially launched its first record-label chapter with the release of Dismissed — Taking The Good With The Bad.
That album became the very first official Indie Vision Music label release.
The move into releasing music was a natural extension of what IVM had already been doing through the webstore: discovering independent bands, promoting their music, and helping connect artists with listeners.
Instead of simply selling releases made by other labels, IVM could now take an active role in putting music into the world.
From March 2003 through mid-2004, Indie Vision Music released music from artists including Dismissed, Next In Line, Forgotten Arrival, Josiah, Pennylane, Joey’s Loss, and others connected to that first label era.
It was a short chapter — roughly a year and a half — but an important one. IVM was no longer only a store. It had become a label, a promotional outlet, and another small piece of the independent Christian music ecosystem.
Brandon continued running the operation largely on his own: managing the website, selling music, filling orders, promoting releases, working with bands, coordinating projects, and trying to keep the growing vision moving forward.
Eventually, doing everything became unsustainable.
By mid-2004, the first version of Indie Vision Music Records had come to an end. The label stopped releasing music, the webstore closed, and Brandon made the difficult decision to walk away from Indie Vision Music entirely.
For a moment, it looked like the story was finished.
It wasn’t.
February 14, 2005 — A New Vision
Something changed during the months that followed.
Brandon continued visiting Christian music websites, punk sites, independent music pages, and music-news outlets, but something felt missing.
There were plenty of places covering music. There were places covering Christian music. There were underground punk and hardcore sites. But there wasn’t one place that brought together everything Brandon loved about the independent Christian underground.
The new bands. The obscure bands. The established favorites. The bands everyone remembered. The bands everyone had forgotten. The classics, the demos, the interviews, the stories, and the people keeping the scene alive.
A new idea began taking shape.
Instead of selling the music, why not tell people about it?
Instead of running another record store, why not build a publication dedicated to discovering and supporting independent Christian music?
A new fire had been lit.
On February 14, 2005, Indie Vision Music relaunched at the same domain — indievisionmusic.com — as an independent Christian music webzine.
The new tagline was:
Faith and Entertainment With an Independent Perspective.
And the mission changed forever.
Discovering a New Generation
The new Indie Vision Music focused on music news, reviews, interviews, features, premieres, free downloads, artist discovery, and independent music culture.
The heart of the project remained the same as the original store: help people discover music they might otherwise never hear.
But now IVM could reach far beyond the limits of physical inventory.
An independent band didn’t need a distribution deal. They didn’t need shelf space in a Christian bookstore. They didn’t need a major marketing budget.
They needed someone willing to listen.
And when something was worth hearing, Indie Vision Music wanted to tell people about it.
IVM became a place where a completely unknown band could appear beside an artist who had been touring for years. That independent perspective became the identity of the site.
Remembering Where We Came From
Indie Vision Music has never been only about what’s new.
Part of the mission has always been remembering what came before.
The Christian underground contains decades of incredible music, scenes, friendships, record labels, venues, tours, compilations, and bands whose stories can easily disappear as generations move forward.
Some bands became huge. Some released one record and disappeared. Some became legends inside small communities while remaining almost unknown everywhere else.
Some songs lived on through old CDs, tapes, burned discs, MP3 folders, YouTube uploads, Bandcamp pages, or the memories of people who happened to be there.
IVM believes those stories still matter.
That’s why the site continues looking backward while moving forward — revisiting classic artists, forgotten records, old-school punk and hardcore, ska, emo, alternative rock, metal, and the countless independent bands that helped create this scene.
There is always another generation discovering this music for the first time.
More Than a Genre
Christian independent music has never belonged to one sound.
It has existed in punk clubs, skate shops, churches, youth rooms, warehouses, festival stages, coffeehouses, garages, all-ages venues, record stores, living rooms, and everywhere in between.
It has sounded like punk, hardcore, ska, emo, metal, alternative rock, pop punk, post-hardcore, indie rock, metalcore, singer-songwriter music, and countless sounds that don’t fit comfortably inside one category.
That’s why Indie Vision Music covers Christian punk, Christian rock, Christian emo, Christian ska, Christian metal, Christian hardcore, alternative music, and independent faith-based artists without expecting every musician to sound the same or communicate their faith in exactly the same way.
Sometimes the message is bold and direct. Sometimes it comes through questions, struggle, loss, faith, doubt, grace, redemption, or hope.
And sometimes it simply comes through the lives and experiences of the musicians creating the art.
That conversation has always been part of this community. IVM intends to keep having it.
Faith, Music, and Hope
Indie Vision Music has always been connected to Christian faith.
But the mission isn’t to manufacture a message where one doesn’t exist or force artists into a predetermined box.
The heart behind IVM is much simpler.
We believe music can encourage people. It can challenge them. It can help someone through difficult seasons. It can build friendships and communities. And it can carry hope into places traditional Christian media may never reach.
Our desire remains what it has been for years:
To see the hope of Christ radiate through the music we share, the artists we support, and the conversations we create.
We aren’t interested in telling artists what they’re supposed to sound like.
We’re interested in listening.
2017 — The Label Returns
After years focused primarily on the webzine, Indie Vision Music unexpectedly returned to releasing music in 2017.
The label side of IVM was revived for a new generation of independent artists.
Over the following years, Indie Vision Music released and worked with music from bands including Light The Way, Homeplate, Grandpa Loves Rhinos, The Prettybads, Small Wars, Must Build Jacuzzi, At The Wayside, Names Without Numbers, Craig’s Brother, and others.
Just like the original 2003–2004 label era, the goal wasn’t chasing the biggest name or following industry trends. It was about finding something worth sharing and helping independent artists reach new listeners.
This second chapter of Indie Vision Music Records eventually came to its natural conclusion.
The final traditional label release was Grandpa Loves Rhinos — Searching in the Sarchasm.
And once again, Indie Vision Music returned its primary focus to what it had become best known for: independent music discovery, news, history, community, and support.
You can explore both eras of Indie Vision Music releases through the IVM Releases Archive here on the site.
Still Here
More than 26 years after Indie Vision Music first went online, the music industry is almost unrecognizable compared with the world of July 2000.
CD stores disappeared. MySpace came and went. Streaming took over. Social media changed music discovery. Algorithms began deciding what millions of people hear.
Labels changed. Websites disappeared. Entire generations of bands formed, broke up, reunited, and disappeared again.
Through all of it, Indie Vision Music kept finding a way forward.
There have been different designs, different writers, different contributors, different eras, and different challenges. There have even been moments when the site went quiet.
But somehow the vision survived.
Because somewhere there is still an independent band recording its first songs. There is still a musician wondering whether anyone will listen. There is still an old fan trying to remember the name of a band they saw in a church room 25 years ago.
There is still someone discovering Christian punk, hardcore, emo, ska, rock, or metal for the first time.
And there is still incredible music that deserves an audience.
That’s why Indie Vision Music is still here.
Fighting From The Ground Up
That independent spirit continues in 2026 with the return of one of Indie Vision Music’s compilation series.
On October 23, 2026, Indie Vision Music will release Fighting From The Ground Up Vol. 5.
The new compilation will arrive as a two-part collection, bringing together another wide-ranging group of independent bands and artists from across the Christian and faith-connected underground.
The compilation brings together new artists, established friends, bands deserving another listen, different generations, and different sounds — all connected by one independent community.
Artwork for the project was created by Nate Parrish, and Fighting From The Ground Up Vol. 5 will be available exclusively through Indie Vision Music on Bandcamp.
More than two decades after IVM started putting underground music in people’s hands, we’re still trying to do the same thing.
The format changed. The mission didn’t.
Independent Since 2000
What began with a 17-year-old booking shows in church youth rooms, church sanctuaries, clubs, and all-ages venues in Southern California eventually became a webstore.
The webstore launched a record label in March 2003. That first label chapter ended in mid-2004. Indie Vision Music itself almost disappeared.
Then on February 14, 2005, it came back with an entirely new purpose.
The webstore became a webzine. The webzine became a community. The label returned in 2017. The label eventually came to a close again.
And through every chapter, one thing continued connecting it all:
Independent music.
Indie Vision Music exists because there will always be music worth discovering beyond the mainstream. There will always be bands whose stories deserve to be told. There will always be old records worth remembering. And there will always be listeners searching for something genuine.
After more than 26 years, we’re still searching too.
Still listening. Still discovering. Still remembering. Still supporting the underground. And still spreading hope.
INDIE VISION MUSIC
Spreading Hope Through Independent Music Since 2000.
Faith and Entertainment With an Independent Perspective.
-Brandon Jones
Owner/Founder
Indie Vision Music
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Official IVM Email:
contact[at]indievisionmusic.com
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made you look
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