No wave was an avant-garde music and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was coined as a rejection of commercial new wave music. No wave musicians took rock instrumentation and experimented with noise, dissonance, and atonality, as well as non-rock genres like free jazz, funk, and disco. The scene often reflected an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic worldview, originally pioneered by New York artists Suicide and Jack Ruby.

In 1978, Brian Eno produced the compilation album No New York, which became an important document of the scene. The no wave movement influenced independent film (no wave cinema), fashion, and visual art, then, in the mid-1980s, musical developments such as mutant disco and post-no wave.

Notable artists include James Chance and the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, DNA, Theoretical Girls and Rhys Chatham.

No wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features, but it generally was characterized by a rejection of the recycling of traditional rock aesthetics, such as blues rock styles and Chuck Berry guitar riffs in punk and new wave music. No wave groups drew on and explored such disparate stylistic forms as minimalism, conceptual art, funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, avant garde and noise music. According to Village Voice writer Steve Anderson, the scene pursued an abrasive reductionism which "undermined the power and mystique of a rock vanguard by depriving it of a tradition to react against". Anderson claimed that the no wave scene represented "New York's last stylistically cohesive avant-rock movement".

There were, however, some elements common to most no-wave music, such as abrasive atonal sounds; repetitive, driving rhythms; and a tendency to emphasize musical texture over melody—typical of La Monte Young's early downtown music. In the early 1980s, Downtown Manhattan's no wave scene transitioned from its abrasive origins into a more dance-oriented sound, with compilations such as ZE Records's Mutant Disco (1981) highlighting a playful sensibility borne out of the city's clash of hip hop, disco and punk styles, as well as dub reggae and world music influences.

No wave music presented a negative and nihilistic world view that reflected the desolation of late 1970s Downtown New York and how they viewed the larger society. In a 2020 essay, Lydia Lunch stated there were many problems in the years that led into the 1970s, and that calling the year 1967 "the Summer of Love" was a "bald-faced lie". The term "no wave" might have been inspired by the French New Wave pioneer Claude Chabrol, with his remark "There are no waves, only the ocean".

There are different theories about how the term was coined. Some suggest Lydia Lunch coined the term in an interview with Roy Trakin in New York Rocker. Others suggest it was coined by Chris Nelson (of Mofungo and The Scene Is Now) in New York Rocker. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth claimed to have seen the term spray-painted on CBGB's theater at 66 Second Avenue before seeing it in the press.

Although not from New York, Captain Beefheart and the confrontational proto-punk performances of Iggy Pop and the Stooges have been cited as an influence on no wave, alongside Nihilist Spasm Band, an early noise music band whose debut LP No Record was released in 1968. The band plastered the word "NO" on much of their equipment and handmade instruments, and recorded a film between 1965 and 1966 entitled "NO Movie". They have been cited as an influence by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.