From the Smiths’ wry poetry to Elliott Smith’s aching murmurs, indie rock has long been defined, in part, by introspection (as well as abstraction), which makes it uniquely tied to identity. One-to-one identification is not the only way to relate to others, of course—good art transcends that, and sometimes relatability doesn’t need to be the defining aesthetic. But if you’ve been listening to music built on personal experience and largely created by straight, white men for years, seeing more and more women, queer folks, and people of color at the forefront of the genre only broadens its scope. Little by little, the scene feels more open.

With its undercurrent of liberal progressivism and its underground spirit, indie rock has never been off-limits to women, at least straight-passing white ones. But indie’s leading ladies have often been positioned as “the girl band,” as if their existence in male-dominated scenes were a novelty. This kind of gender essentialism can come from well-meaning sources, too, and be handled with more nuance than “woman is a genre.” Earlier this year, in a feature package that felt like a long time coming, The New York Times declared that “Rock’s Not Dead, It’s Ruled by Women.” Even a publication as broad as the Times could say it plainly: “Indie rock, especially, has undergone an identity crisis this decade. Often, male-fronted indie bands have begun to feel rote or even parodic, as if they’ve run out of ideas or exhausted the passion to develop new ones.”

The eight women who participated in the Times’ roundtable seemed to derive some amount of pride from being visible, though they also expressed frustration at how quickly their presence became politicized. Sheer Mag’s Christina Halladay, whose hell-bent scowl is easily the most powerful part of her band’s infectious 2017 LP of ’70s-style hard rock, spoke of the years it took to start playing in bands, in large part because she didn’t see herself represented. Vagabon’s Lætitia Tamko, who lived in Cameroon until she was a teenager, said that it wasn’t until she saw a male acquaintance’s band—at her first concert, at age 21—that she had a I can do that moment, despite having played guitar since high school. Her 2017 debut, Infinite Worlds (Father/Daughter Records), sounds comfortingly familiar in its moments of hollowed-out rawness, but Tamko’s shouts about making your own space in the world quietly shook me in a new way. They felt necessary this year.

What underscores these comments from Halladay and Tamko is a sense that the structure of the scene created an intimidating obstacle they had to overcome. That feeling continues to drive the internal struggles of othered people in not just the music sphere, but pretty much anywhere they’ve historically been made to feel that they do not belong, either explicitly or implicitly. But the last decade has seen the rise of technology that allows you to write, record, produce, distribute, and promote your own music from your bedroom, starting from the minute you watch a YouTube tutorial on the five beginner guitar chords “you need to know.” The barrier to entry has never been more conducive to proving your own worst fears wrong by simply doing it yourself.

Even if you’re interested in making a record with a full-band sound, you no longer have to be part of a band or work with a producer to achieve it. And while having a singular creative figure at the fore isn’t really that different from how many bands have a primary songwriter, the freedom to go it alone encourages a new kind of auteur approach, which can be helpful as far as empowering songwriters who, in another era, might have felt alienated by rock’s straight, white boys’ club. Artists don’t have to resolve not to rock the boat in a band of dudes—they can build their own damn boat and sail to an island where people get them.

Jay Som’s Everybody Works is a great example of this self-produced and performed approach. Released by Polyvinyl back in March, the second LP from Bay Area singer-songwriter Melina Duterte balances dream-pop whispers and a dark fog of distorted guitars with slinky R&B. Identity plays a small supporting role, too, but Duterte leaves room for the listener; in the first line of the record, she coos, “I like the way your lipstick stains the corner of my smile.” From there, depending on your own perspective, you might listen to the record and imagine her singing about women, but the specific perspective isn’t necessarily the point.

This year, Jay Som wasn’t the only promising singer-songwriter whose sophomore album perfected that tricky balance between polished ambition and lo-fi charm. Soft Sounds From Another Planet (Dead Oceans), from Japanese Breakfast (aka Michelle Zauner), is a rare combination of funny, meditative, and blunt as hell, all set to bubbling beats, girl-group pop, and wistful electric-guitar strumming. Big Thief’s Capacity (Saddle Creek) lives and dies at the deft hands of Adrianne Lenker, whose vivid familial storytelling and honeyed vocals set her folk-rock band apart from the pack. And although Julien Baker’s Turn Off the Lights (Matador) is as much a piano album as it is a showcase of her transfixing guitar meanderings, the record revolves around the kind of stark emotional trauma that appeals to listeners who weaned themselves on emo.

Arguably this decade’s master of channeling the emo vulnerability of her youth into punk-flecked indie rock has been the Alabama-bred singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield, who records as Waxahatchee. Her fourth album, this year’s Out in the Storm (Merge), includes two of her best songs ever: “Never Been Wrong” and “8 Ball.” In the first, which immediately blows open the record’s front door, I hear something so real, and so personal: the art of beating a stubborn, arrogant man at his own emotional game. The interplay between the guitars and the vocals is masterful, the way Crutchfield teeters at the brink of anger with her riffs before she cuts them off and swerves back towards quieter verses, only for frustrations to keep bubbling over in the chorus. What a clever way to mimic how it feels to navigate these situations, as a woman, especially this line: “I will unravel when no one sees what I see.”