Short answers, pulled from the story.
New wave is a pop-oriented music genre that emerged in the United States and United Kingdom in the mid-to-late 1970s. It began as a lighter, more melodic offshoot of punk rock, incorporating electronic sounds, choppy guitars, synthesizers, and a quirky, humorous tone. The term was popularized by Seymour Stein of Sire Records as a marketing alternative to the stigmatized label "punk."
New wave peaked commercially in the US from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, with its most successful era beginning in 1981 when MTV launched. In a December 1982 Gallup poll, 14% of American teenagers named new wave their favorite type of music, making it the third-most-popular genre at the time.
Blondie's "Heart of Glass," released in January 1979, became the first new wave single to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. It also reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.
When MTV launched in 1981, most American hit records had no music videos, so the channel filled its schedule with British new wave videos, which had been produced for UK television programs like Top of the Pops since the mid-1970s. This gave British new wave acts wide American exposure and contributed to what journalists called the Second British Invasion.
Regional new wave scenes emerged across Europe and beyond, including Germany's Neue Deutsche Welle, Spain's La Movida Madrileña, Belgium and France's coldwave, the Yugoslav new wave, and underground scenes in the Soviet Union centered in Moscow and Leningrad. Soviet new wave bands included Kino, Akvarium, Nautilus Pompilius, and Piknik.
New wave influenced college rock, grunge, and alternative rock in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as later internet microgenres including bloghouse, chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and egg punk. The 1990s revival was labeled the "new wave of new wave" by the British press, and the 2000s post-punk revival in New York was sometimes called "New New Wave."