Shoegazing

From shoe + gazing, because of the tendency of such performers to look down rather than at the crowd.

Full definition of shoegazing

(uncountable)

(British) A type of Britpop or other indie music of the 1990s, characterised by a dreamlike sound making much use of effect pedals, and by a detached or introverted performance style.

2006, James Buckley, Celebrate Myself, page 12,"...Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong here, Danny, but wasn't it you who told me that true shoegazing began and ended with Slowdive's 12-inch debut: the imaginatively titled, 'Slowdive'?â€â€œYou're taking me out of context here, dude. What I meant was that it was the epoch of the genre. The other bands still made a valid contribution, they just didn't define the moment."
2011, Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits, page 491,Johansson and Sitek started out in more faithful lo-fi style before filtering the songs through an indie-rock sensibility that's equal parts postpunk-gothic, 4AD dreampop, shoegazing drone, and TV on the Radio epicness.
2013, Pete Crigler, Majorlabelland And Assorted Oddities, page 91,Then in 2003, they released Still Electric only on their website; with this album, they'd taken on more of a shoegazing style of rock, similar to Chapterhouse or Catherine Wheel.

shoegazing