Surf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture. It has three main streams or subgenres:
• Instrumental dance music with guitars that arn't distorted but sound dominant in the music
• Surf pop music, including both surf ballads and dance music that includes a vocal line.
• Surf rock, which can be classified as a blend of both the other genres and sometimes can be used as a general statement for surf music.

Many surf bands have been equally noted for both surf instrumental and surf pop music, so surf music is generally considered as a single genre despite the variety of these styles. Recordings in all three traditional subgenres are normally attributed to the bands that performed them, rather than to individual artists. A more recent development is the singer songwriter subgenre, which includes artists like Beau Young, Jack Johnson, Donavon Frankenreiter, Matt Costa, and overlaps the others in style.