"New Wave" was a marketing term the recording industry came up with to describe pop-punk and post-punk music. Punk didn't get played on the radio except in markets where there was a listener base large and diverse enough to support or on college radio. A friend of mine got fired for playing a Ramones tune on the midnight to six shift in 1979 on a regional FM station, four years after the boys recorded their first album. You could play Blondie, you could play the Go-Go's, you could play Nick Lowe, but you couldn't play the Ramones, the Clash, or The Jam. Why? Those last three acts were "Punk" while the first three were pop enough to be labeled "New Wave". Nick Lowe and his band Rockpile were rooted in Pub Rock and Rockabilly. Acts like Blondie, firmly Punk early on, as were the Go-Go's. They slid into "New Wave", you can sell bands fronted by pretty women, all you've got to is get them to mainstream their sound, and that's what happened.
Depeche Mode and New Order? Proto-Goth. Those two acts got a great industrial sounding post-punk band like The Cure to start wearing Kabuki makeup and warbling morosely. They even ruined The Gang of Four, whose debut album, "Entertainment" is a classic and a road map to where post-punk music should have went, lots of distortion and wise-ass lyrics. I blame the Psychedelic Furs and Ecstasy.
The last real punk band to emerge was Stiff Little Fingers, two Catholics and two Prot's from Ulster in 1978/79. The height of "The Troubles". Those guys put their lives on the line every time they played a gig in Ulster. Other bands like the Clash talked the talk, those lads lived it. After The Jam split, they picked up Bruce Foxton as bass player. A damned Englishman, that took a big set of stones.
Again, "New Wave" was just a marketing term to sell a certain type of music and fashion. They got you to wear a skinny tie didn't they? The only pointy toed footwear I ever wore were cowboy boots because all the cool guys like Jerry Lee Lewis and Boozoo Chavis wore 'em. I still wear red socks in honor of Slim Whitman. You don't get any cooler than Slim, just ask Kinky Friedman.