At their headline London show, the New York four-piece talk about their new deluxe album, opening for The 1975, and why being earnest might finally be cool again.

The last thing Laundry Day discuss with me before their sold-out headline show at The Garage isn’t their new deluxe album or how they’re finding London so far. It’s whether bassist Henry P has enough time to make an emergency Pret run before doors.

One hour until stage time, the New York four-piece are speed walking through a backstage photoshoot whilst trying to mentally prepare for the evening ahead. Frontman Jude talks at such a velocity that he keeps interrupting himself halfway through answers, whilst drummer Sawyer turns almost every conversation into a philosophical tangent. Most importantly, nobody seems capable of finishing a single thought uninterrupted.

It’s obvious that whatever Laundry Day is doing, their schedule doesn’t involve media training; which is probably why they feel so compelling in a time where creative authenticity is especially valued.

Formed whilst still high-schoolers in New York, Laundry Day first built an audience through candid singing videos and street-style content that felt refreshingly untouched by the self-conscious coolness dominating internet music culture at the moment. Nearly a decade after forming, that same chemistry still sits at the centre of the band’s appeal, only now it exists on a much larger scale. 

Between selling out Webster Hall, performing at Madison Square Garden during a Knicks halftime show, and opening for artists including Ed Sheeran, Clairo, Inhaler, and The 1975, Laundry Day has evolved into one of indie-pop’s most distinctive young bands, offering a maximalist collision of colourful hooks and an earnestness that most artists spend years trying to disguise. Released last autumn, EARWORM marked a significant step forward for the band, distilling years of friendship and ambition into their most fully realised project to date. The deluxe edition, released on 8th May, only pushes that world further: louder and somehow even more emotionally overwhelming than before.

Maybe it’s fitting that Laundry Day’s rise currently coincides with the Knicks heading to the NBA finals: both feel powered by the same aspirational New York belief that the biggest stage is always still ahead of you.

“We still pretend we’re high school kids,” Jude notes. “We’re still running around pretending to be adults in front of people who’ve worked here for however long.”

That tension between sincerity and self-awareness feels central to everything Laundry Day makes. Backstage, the band still speaks about live performance with the intensity of teenagers fantasising about arena tours from a bedroom floor. Reflecting on the band’s earliest gigs together, Jude remembers how seriously they approached even the smallest performances. “When we played our first ever show in our school basement during lunch, we treated it like Madison Square Garden,” he says. 

Even now, long after getting there, they still obviously think that way about every show they play.

At one point, the conversation shifts towards touring with The 1975, specifically a moment where frontman Matty Healy told the band that he used to drive The 1975’s tour van himself before they became one of the biggest bands in the world.“You just can’t even imagine this band you’re looking up to doing that,” Jude says, still sounding slightly stunned by it. “And then suddenly, we’re doing it ourselves.”

He laughs whilst describing driving rental vans through London, collecting parking tickets and hauling gear in and out of venues before adding: “Maybe someday we’ll tell a younger artist that story.”

“You have to love every part of it,” Sawyer adds. “I know we’ll be those old guys watching the openers pack the van.”

Back inside the green room, conversation drifts naturally onto BROCKHAMPTON, a shared obsession for pretty much everyone in the room, before their tracks start blasting through a phone speaker whilst the band pose for photos. Meanwhile, photographer Noam, also from New York, swaps stories with the band about growing up in different schools and neighbourhoods across the city.

Nobody seems particularly interested in controlling how they’re perceived. In a culture where irony often feels safer than sincerity, Laundry Day’s authenticity feels almost radical. They speak openly about wanting their music to feel communal and emotionally immediate. “We literally said we wanted to make aux music,” Jude explains of EARWORM and its recent deluxe edition. “Something people would send to their friends or their crush.”

Still, simplicity is deceptive where Laundry Day is concerned. Questions constantly derail into anecdotes and debates. At one point, the band attempts to assign vegetables to each other with complete seriousness. Henry P is labelled broccoli, whilst namesake and guitarist Henry W is apparently the slightly similar cauliflower. Sawyer gives “green bean energy” and Jude becomes a carrot, “rooted in the ground.” Later, when asked what’s currently ruining their screen time averages, Henry P immediately answers Chess.com, before sheepishly defending it as making him feel “less brain-rotty.”

Maybe that witty energy is precisely why Laundry Day feels so alive right now. Their music navigates all the complex emotions of your early twenties – the years when everything feels simultaneously life-changing yet faintly ridiculous. Every crush matters too much, every live show feels enormous. In another band’s hands, that level of vulnerability might collapse under its own weight. Laundry Day somehow makes it feel liberating instead.

“We’re all listening to different things now and creating this cyborg of an artist,” Jude says of Laundry Day at one stage, trying to explain how the band’s sound has evolved alongside the group’s camaraderie.

“Anything on a stage should be theatre,” Sawyer later adds, quoting a favourite David Bowie line that’s become the band’s philosophy over the years. “Some bands just walk onstage, and they’re magnetic,” he shrugs. “We love rehearsing. We love hanging together, going over harmonies.”

A few hours later, inside the completely packed-out The Garage in North London that’s almost dripping with condensation, that philosophy clicks into place.

Laundry Day performs like a band trying to turn the room into a memory people will replay back to themselves years later. The set moves with tireless pacing, constantly reshaping the atmosphere before it can settle. Explosive indie-pop choruses collapse into emotional piano ballads before detonating back into full-band chaos minutes later. 

And the crowd mirrors every shift back at them. During one song, a group of fans lifts synchronised handwritten signs, timed perfectly to lyrics being sung both towards and from the stage. New deluxe tracks “Homegirl” and “Never Meet Your Heroes” make their live debut to cheers so loud they immediately feel like fan favourites already embedded into the band’s world.

Whilst Jude naturally dominates much of the stage as frontman, drummer Sawyer becomes one of the evening’s biggest revelations. His vocals are genuinely staggering live, commanding attention in a way that feels completely authentic and unforced, cutting clean through the noise of the room and transforming their songs into something even more expansive than their recorded versions.

Then comes the encore. Or, more accurately described as an encore…upon encore…upon encore. The boys re-emerge to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, a choice that should feel unbearably cheesy, but somehow lands. What follows is a multi-song epilogue that becomes the most euphoric section of the entire night, as the room somehow gets louder with every passing song, instead of winding down for the night.

Earlier in the evening, when asked to describe the visual world of EARWORM, the band answered with true feelings. Henry P compares it to “when you’re at the beach, all covered in sand and then finally get into a pool, and everything washes off.” Sawyer imagines “a movie montage of a bunch of dudes at a water park.” By the end of the night, standing in the hazy aftermath of the encore, those descriptions suddenly feel wholly accurate. Laundry Day’s entire world exists in that exact emotional atmosphere: overstimulated, sentimental, chaotic, slightly comical, and deeply alive.

“You always feel a little cringe betting so much on yourself anyway,” Sawyer admitted earlier. But watching The Garage scream every word back at them, it doesn’t seem like Laundry Day has anything to cringe about at all.

Listen to EARWORM…

Words – Hannah Breen

Photography – Noam Oster