means Describing music, film, games, or other creative work produced independently of major corporate backing — and the scrappy, self-directed aesthetic that often comes with it.

from A clipping of "independent," which traces back through French to the Latin in- ("not") plus dependere ("to hang from"). So an independent thing literally doesn't hang off anything else. The short form "indie" rose through 20th-century entertainment talk — first for independent film studios and labels operating outside the big players, later spreading to music and beyond, where it came to mean as much a vibe as a business arrangement.