Alternative/indie

Back when I was getting into rock music, most of the bands I saw labeled as "indie" or "alternative" were the crappier ones, so I pretty much wrote off the entire genre and have been avoiding it ever since.
However, I did get into early alternative metal at some point, as well as grunge (haven't really went deep into the genres, though), and I do like some of the early alt. rock I've heard (i.e. stuff like U2, REM, The Church, The Smiths, The Smithereens or Midnight Oil), and recently I sort of felt I might try giving the genre as a whole a new chance.
Knowing people on these boards tend to have similar tastes as I do (i.e. metal and classic rock), I decided to ask for some recommendations here.
So, if there's any alt. rock and indie fans here, what would you recommend to a classic metal/hard rock fan? Outside of the alt. metal stuff I already mentioned, obviously.
Thanks.

I'm guessing you have too be familiar with The Replacements?



I really started with Paul Westerberg's solo material and then found out about The Replacements, but I enjoyed that just as much. I discovered him through I consider one of my top 10 soundtracks of all time in that of the movie "Singles" and continued to follow his career.




I saw these guys as part of a triple bill with Anthrax & White Zombie...



Though I get into a decent amount of Indie/Alt Rock from the 80's & 90's, these guys were probably my favorite from the latter half of the 90's.

A few favs of mine:

Based on that list you gave i'd add Simple Minds, The Alarm and Big Country.

Id check out Metric www.ilovemetric.com

I wasn't into it much either and while in college (early 90's) I worked at the college station and got to hear a ton of it. Always liked The Smithereens and Soundgarden but a lot of it was kind of blah to me (I was into GNR, Crue, Van Halen, et al). But one alternative band I loved was The Juliana Hatfield 3.

And of course I always enjoyed REM. Early stuff is really good.

Dark Horseman wrote:

Based on that list you gave i'd add Simple Minds, The Alarm and Big Country.

Definitely The Alarm. I always thought they were sort of a cross between The Clash and U2 - especially their earlier albums. One of my favorite "alternative" bands.

I still listen to The Alarm quite a bit.

And they're still putting out music despite Mike Peters having had cancer. 

Are you familiar with the story behind the "45 RPM" single several years back?  Where Mike had written this song but he knew British radio would never play a video for it with his old fart self in it so he hired a bunch of young kids to be in it and it became a major hit in the UK.

Dead Moon

Probably one of the most influential proto grunge bands along with mudhoney and the melvins. More on the garage rock/grunge side of things.

Also I don't care what anyone says, you can't go wrong with this...

Throwing in some Britpop (which was going on in the UK at the same time grunge was happening in America).  These would probably be regarded as the "big four" of that scene.

Thanks a lot, guys, will be checking out these clips now!

Simple Minds I already know and like, however I always thought of them and Big Country as new wave rather than alternative.

I´ve NEVER considered U2 as alt rock . The only "alt rock" band I can probably say I like is Jane's Addiction , mainly because they mix their alt rock with tons of Hard Rock , porg and Heavy Metal influences .