Slacker rock emerged during the advent of the American underground scene in the 1980s as a raw, noisy style of Indie Rock. Its name stems from its use of low-fidelity production & recording equipment and a laid-back & unsophisticated attitude of performance, giving it an unclean and distinctly ramshackle sound associated with Generation X slacker culture.

Developing alongside early-to-mid 1980s Alternative Rock/Indie Pop genres Twee Pop, Jangle Pop, Noise Pop and the New Zealand Dunedin Sound, slacker rock artists take inspiration from the sparsely produced, DIY-ethics exhibited in these styles with a strong emphasis placed on technically inferior/sloppy-sounding recording and musicianship. This is either intentional with the idea to lend the music a certain rough charm or simply due to being performed by underground artists with a lack of facilities and/or equipment (typically making use of 4-track Tascam recorders), money and musical training.

After the foundation set by acts such as Beat Happening, Dinosaur Jr., and Tall Dwarfs in the 1980s, slacker rock reached its golden period in the 1990s, the decade with which the music is most readily identified, with bands such as Pavement, Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Neutral Milk Hotel, Modest Mouse, and Sparklehorse emerging around this period. Slacker rock artists provided a disjointed contrast between raw, dissonant guitar lines and catchy melodies reminiscent of Power Pop and other general Pop Rock motifs (comparable to noise pop's marriage between waves of distortion and hook-friendly pop tunes).

Countless underground and unsigned bands continue to practice the style, whilst successful artists in the 2010s such as Courtney Barnett, Alex G, and Car Seat Headrest have been influenced by and adopted elements of 1990s slacker rock into their sound.