Laundry Day Prepping for a Show

A blue milk crate full of hot dogs has arrived at Bowery Ballroom, where, on a recent balmy Friday, the band Laundry Day is inside rehearsing.

As the early-evening sun slants gold over Lower Manhattan, a few of the band’s pals emerge from the venue to distribute foil-wrapped glizzies to fans standing in a block-long line that began forming hours ago, in advance of the first of two sold-out Laundry Day shows here this weekend. The handful of young fans I speak to have all been listening to the band for years—well before their recent spate of consistent TikTok-and-Reels virality caught the attention of megastars like SZA, Matty Healy, and Drake.

There are no openers on the docket tonight—just the boys, putting on a hometown show. The members of Laundry Day seem wary, if excited, about the snaking line of ticket holders outside, though their 9:30 set won’t start for a few more hours.

Back inside, at center stage is lead singer Jude Ciulla Lipkin, soon to be 22; on a raised platform behind him is Sawyer Nunes, 22, the band’s polymath, who handles drums, guitar, and keys, as well as vocals. Flanking the stage, and rounding out the group, are two young men named Henry: guitarist Henry Weingartner, whom they call Henry, and bassist Henry Pearl, whom they call HP. (Uncannily, both Henrys, also 22, were born on the exact same day.)

Laundry Day’s Rise on Social Media

Lately things are moving fast for Laundry Day. When I arrive at the venue, the band’s branding manager and former high school classmate

Elias Gerstein, 22, who’s dressed the part in a gray suit and a Yankees cap, hands me a press kit one sheet while apologizing for its info being a little outdated. How outdated? I ask. “It’s from a week and a half ago,” Elias says.

If you first encountered Laundry Day on your TikTok or Instagram feed in the last six months or so, you might have assumed they were comedians—or, at least, a “band” in name only. Their social media output consists primarily of perfectly goofy riffs on popular songs harmonized with an exaggerated boy-band affectation, not unlike a hot-shot collegiate male a capella group doing an ambitious cover of “Hotline Bling.” Their most-viewed videos show the group, usually posted up on a New York City sidewalk in ragamuffin-y thrifted streetwear, covering a viral hit by 4batz, Tyla, or The 1975, scooping their voices deep into notes and leaving a trail of throaty Whoa-ohhhs and Yeah-h-hs worthy of a young Bieber, all while walking toward the camera like some kind of Zoomer barbershop quartet.

They have been compared, frequently, to the Lonely Island. (It helps that Jude is a dead ringer for a “Lazy Sunday”–era Andy Samberg.) The punchline beyond the punchline, though, is how angelic their voices actually sound. On a clip of Jude warbling his way through the Frank Ocean sample from Drake’s song “Virginia Beach”—“I bet your mother would be proud of you-UUU-ooo / yeahhh-YEAHHH-yuh”—one of the top comments reads: “The riff was too clean for this to be funny.”