Travis Egedy, better known as Denver’s Pictureplane, is calling from Alaska. He’s been there for the past few days, touring the frozen north and seeing the sights with Richmond’s Narwhalz. And though the trip is a short one—Egedy will be back home in time for a New Year’s Eve appearance with Crystal Castles at the Boulder Theater—it’s already gotten pretty weird. “[We’re] really just taking it to this extreme level of absurdity up here,” Egedy says. “Basically, all we’ve been trying to do is find guns and light tires on fire and then roll them down hills.” It sounds a bit surreal—romantic even. But this is what Egedy is all about: having fun and making art. And, occasionally, starting movements.

Egedy lays claim to the term “witch house,” an invented phrase he blithely came up with in late 2009 to describe his own music. It didn’t mean much when it was first published, in a quote from Egedy on Pitchfork, but as with most things on the internet, it never fully went away either. It showed up on blogs, on Last.fm, and then—perhaps the surest sign of its mainstream acceptance—it appeared in a New York Times article. By the time it came back to Egedy, witch house had already been dissected by Todd Pendu, taken through the rounds of fervor and fallout, simultaneously debated and written off. And all Egedy could do was laugh about it, and further muddle it with a purposely ridiculous list of “rules to make a great witch house song.” So what is the real story on witch house? Egedy explains.

It’s a joke.

Travis Egedy: Myself and my friend Shams—he makes house music, too—we were joking about the sort of house music we make, [and we were calling it] witch house because it’s, like, occult-based house music. It was 2009. And then I did this best-of-the-year thing with Pitchfork about witch house, and it was me and Shams and Modern Witch. I was saying that we were witch house bands, and 2010 was going to be the year of witch house, that it was going to get really witchy and stuff. It took off from there. Different people started posting about it on blogs, and it sort of became an internet meme. And someone attached the name witch house to the sounds that bands like Salem were making—the slowed down, spooky, Goth juke kind of stuff.

Except that it’s not really a joke anymore.

TE: It was never meant to be an actual genre, at least not fully. It was a half-assed conceptual joke that really turned into something real. It’s [become] a weird, cultural phenomenon—all these bands doing this sort of similar aesthetic. But, at the time, when I said witch house, it didn’t even really exist. I think it has some staying power. The name is goofy, but there is a lot of legitimate art that’s being made within witch house. So I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

But, really, it’s still sort of a joke.

TE: A couple days ago I found out that there’s a witch-house.com. It’s really absurd to me that people are treating it like this actual genre. You can’t do that. You’ll kill it. Styles and trends become stagnant or really un-cool, I think, if you try and identify it as this one thing or this one style. It gets boring. People will get bored of it. We’ll see if that happens with witch house. I say try and keep it forward moving.

The A.V. Club: Did you look at witch-house.com? What did you think of it?

TE: It’s people asking questions like, “What kind of music equipment do I need for my witch house band?” Like, in all seriousness. You want to start a witch house band and you’re wondering what kind of equipment you need? That’s pretty absurd. But I guess that’s how the internet goes. And who knows who even started [the website]? Anyone can start anything.

AVC: Are there any defining characteristics to witch house?

TE: [Laughs.] It doesn’t exist. That’s the thing. I think that’s what people don’t understand. There is no list of rules, that’s why I made that list of rules, because it’s so retarded and arbitrary. They asked me about witch house, and it’s like, “Are these kids joking?” To limit yourself or pigeonhole yourself, to put yourself in a box, in a frame, “Oh, I’m witch house, therefore I have to act like this or sound like this,” you’re really losing the point.

Witchin' w/ Mario Zoots from badatsports on Vimeo.