Post-disco is a term and genre to describe an aftermath in popular music history c. 1979–1986, imprecisely beginning with the backlash against disco music in the United States, leading to civil unrest and a riot in Chicago known as the Disco Demolition Night on July 12, 1979. During its dying stage, disco displayed an increasingly electronic character that soon served as a stepping stone to new wave, old-school hip-hop, Euro disco, and was succeeded by an underground club music called hi-NRG, which was its direct continuation.

An underground movement of disco music, which was simultaneously "stripped-down" and featured "radically different sounds," took place on the East Coast that "was neither disco and neither R&B." This scene, known as post-disco, catering to the New York metropolitan area, was initially led by urban contemporary musical artists partially in response to the perceived over-commercialization and artistic downfall of disco culture. It was developed from the rhythm and blues sound exemplified by Parliament-Funkadelic, the electronic side of disco, dub music techniques, and other genres. Post-disco was typified by New York City music groups like "D" Train and Unlimited Touch who followed a more urban approach while others, like Material and ESG, followed a more experimental one. Post-disco was, like disco, a singles-driven market controlled mostly by independent record companies that generated a cross-over chart success all through the early-to-mid 1980s. Most creative control was in the hands of record producers and club DJs which was a trend that outlived the dance-pop era.

The term post-disco is often conflated with individual styles of its era, such as boogie, synth-funk, or electro-funk. Other musical styles that emerged in the post-disco era include dance-pop and Italo disco, and the genre led to the development of the early alternative dance, club-centered house and techno music.

Drum machines, synthesizers, sequencers were either partly or entirely dominant in a composition or mixed up with various acoustic instruments, depending on the artist and on the year. Electronic instruments became more and more prevalent for each year during the period and dominated the genre completely by the mid 1980s.

Darryl Payne argued about the minimal approach of post-disco, saying:

Producers are using a lot more sounds and a lot less instruments: the "Forget Me Nots" and "Don't Make Me Wait" tracks are really empty, but there's a sophistication people can get into.

The main forces in post-disco were the 12" single format and short-lived collaborations (many of them one-hit wonders) while indie record producers were instrumental in the musical direction of what the scene was headed to. The music that mostly catered to dance and urban audiences later managed to influence more popular and mainstream acts like Madonna, New Order or Pet Shop Boys.

The music tended to be technology-centric, keyboard-laden, melodic, with funk-oriented bass lines (often performed on a Minimoog), synth riffs, dub music aesthetics, and background jazzy or blues-y piano layers. For strings and brass sections, synthesizer sounds were preferred to the lush orchestration heard on many disco tracks, although such arrangements would later resurface in some house music.^{[citation needed]} Soulful female vocals, however, remained an essence of post-disco.