Emo is a genre of music which is short for "emotive hardcore." The genre first formed in the mid-1980s, taking the stylistic formulas of hardcore punk and post-hardcore and combining them with the introspective and sensitive lyricism that emo has become so well known for. In the mid 1990s, emo incorporated indie rock elements. This ultimately made the emo bands of the 90's much less aggressive and 'punk-ish' and more melodramatic, sometimes even acoustic. Once emo became mainstream in the 2000s, it became shaped by pop-punk, (a fusion genre of emo and pop punk exists, and is known as "emo-pop") alternative rock and melodic hardcore. The birthplace of the emo genre is often referred to as Washington, D.C., mainly because the first known emo band, Rites Of Spring, formed there.