Krautrock (also called kosmische Musik, German for "cosmic music") is a broad genre of experimental rock and music scene that developed in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Artists blend elements of psychedelic rock, avant-garde composition, and electronic music, among other eclectic sources. Common elements included hypnotic rhythms, extended improvisation, musique concrète techniques, and early synthesizers, while the music generally moved away from the rhythm & blues roots and song structure found in traditional Anglo-American rock music. Prominent groups associated with the krautrock label included Neu!, Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, Amon Düül II and Harmonia.

The term "krautrock" was popularised by British music journalists as a humorous umbrella-label for the diverse German scene, and although many such artists disliked the term, it is no longer considered controversial by German artists in the 21st century. Despite this, English-language authors remain critical of it. The movement was partly born out of the radical student protests of 1968, as German youth rebelled against their country's legacy in World War II and sought a popular music distinct from traditional German music and American pop. The period contributed to the development of ambient music and techno, and influenced subsequent genres such as post-punk, new-age music, and post-rock.

Krautrock has been described as a broad genre encompassing varied approaches, but commonly drawing on psychedelia, avant-garde collage, electronic sounds, and rock music, while typically featuring "improvisation and hypnotic, minimalistic rhythms." Los Angeles Magazine summarized the genre as "American psychedelica meets icy Germanic detachment." Melody Maker described the style as "where the over-reaching ambition and untethered freakitude of late '60s acid rock is checked and galvanised by a proto-punk minimalism ... music of immense scale that miraculously avoided prog-rock's bombastics." AllMusic described it as expanding on the territory associated with art rock and progressive rock, but diverging from the American and British groups' emphasis on jazz and classical elements in favor of "a droning, pulsating sound that owed more to the avant garde than to rock & roll."

Some common musical features exhibited by krautrock artists include:

Despite a common approach and generational attitude among artists, the New Statesman argues that "in truth, no two Krautrock acts sound remotely alike. Compare the dreamy synthesiser washes of Tangerine Dream with the alien noise collages of Faust or the psychedelic funk of Can." However, a common feature is the "motorik" beat: the 4/4 beat often used by drummers associated with krautrock, characterised by a kick drum-heavy, pulsating groove, that created a forward-flowing feel. The motorik beat was used by Can in the song "Mother Sky", by Neu! on their debut album, and by Kraftwerk in the song "Autobahn" on their album of the same name, later being adopted by other krautrock bands. It has been widely used in many different styles of music beyond krautrock. According to XLR8R, the term krautrock is often used by critics to signify the "mesmerizing motorik rhythms pioneered by Can and Neu!", but contested that "they represent merely a tiny fraction of the music that emerged from Germany during krautrock's Golden Age".

Krautrock emerged in West Germany during the 1960s and early 1970s. The music was partially inspired by broad cultural developments such as the revolutionary 1968 German student movement, with many young people having both political and aesthetic concerns. Youth rebelled against both dominant American influence and conservative German entertainment such as schlager music, seeking to liberate themselves from Germany's Nazi legacy in World War II and create a new popular culture. Dieter Moebius, of the bands Cluster and Harmonia, noted that "we were a lot of the times on the streets instead of studying. As young people we were not very proud to be German [...] we were all tired of listening to bad German music and imitations of American music. Something had to happen."

We were trying to put aside everything we had heard in rock 'n' roll, the three-chord pattern, the lyrics. We had the urge of saying something completely different.

The movement saw artists merge elements of varied genres such as psychedelic rock, avant-garde forms of electronic music, funk rhythm, jazz improvisation and "ethnic" music styles, typically reflecting a "genuine sense of awe and wonder". A core influence on these German artists were rock acts such as Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart and the Beatles. Hapshash and the Coloured Coat's debut album Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids (1967) was later regarded as being influential on the early works of Amon Düül, the student commune Kommune 1, and other pioneers of German krautrock. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown on krautrock musicians was also notable.