
Almost a year ago, the most popular indie band you know, Wallows, released their third studio album.
“Kelsey,” you say. “Why do I care about an album that came out a year ago? We live in a time where the only things that have lasting relativity are those that are already established within the pop culture canon.”
But Wallows is firmly established within pop culture canon— the trenches of the 2010s. Their first album, Nothing Happens, is the product of the transition from teenager to early 20s adult, still trying to figure the world out. It also features Clairo. Model is the younger sibling to Nothing Happens. There is less commentary about the difficulty of moving through the world, teenage angst gone. The sound is rock driven and slightly more mature in its views on the subject matter of breaking up and falling in love with new people. Notable if only because “I Wouldn’t Mind” has the vocals of drummer Cole Preston, who hasn’t had solo vocals on a song since “Quarterback” in 2021, Model is intentionally laidback, each song a story about the phases of a relationship. The album is a rational journey from their sophomore release Tell Me That It’s Over (2022). Which is all to say, I like the album. I had so much fun dancing to it when I saw the band play live in August of 2024. It flows wells, perfect to put on in the background, on a road trip, or walking to class. This is what makes their new single slightly disappointing.
“Your New Favorite Song” has grown on me since its release on January 10th. Originally a B-side to “A Warning” (one of the blander songs on Model) on a 7 inch vinyl variant of the album, the song was leaked on New Year's Day. This leakage was quickly followed by promotional posters around Los Angeles and then a drop to streaming platforms. It certainly belongs on Model, but despite what the title suggests, it’s not my new favorite song. I wasn’t particularly excited or moved by it. If I wanted to listen to vocalist Dylan Minnette croon, I’d direct myself to Tell Me That It’s Over.
I became aware of Wallows in middle school, but didn’t start listening to them consistently until 2022. What is so exciting about music is the (hypothetical) ability to experiment. This ability is shown in Wallows’ early singles which came out in 2017-18 and their EPs Spring (2019) and Remote (2020). It’s shown in their early music videos— remember when they had blue hair? There’s obviously nothing wrong with maturing in sound; that’s an important part of being an artist. I listened to “Your New Favorite Song” this morning. I already like it a bit more. But innovation and exploration within your maturing sound is important too. This article is not to disparage Wallows at all. They’ve fallen somewhere within my Spotify Wrapped Top Five for a few years now. Rather, I want to use this as a chance to showcase another band and examine what direction the alternative/independent areas of the music industry may be heading.
LAUNDRY DAY might be considered an outlier of a social media phenomenon rather than a band. We’ve all seen the videos of an artist claiming they have written the “song of the summer” (you did not), they have a song for the “Rory Gilmores” of the world (okay— the yacht stealers?), that their song is “clubbing in the recession core” (-core should be erased from the English lexicon). Sometime early last year (probably around the same time Model came out), videos started popping up on my Instagram feed. Four boys, dressed in clothes practically falling off their bodies, harmonizing in overexaggerated, nasally voices, usually singing whatever song was viral that week. Brat summer’s “360” was a victim of this, as was “A Bar Song” by Shaboozey, “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan, and multiple spoofs of Sabrina Carpenter’s album Short n’Sweet. Interspersed between these videos are photos of a college tour, matching Yankees uniforms, promotional material about opening for Ed Sheeran at the Barclays Center, releasing the second season of their YouTube docuseries “Road Dogs” and performing, most recently, at Madison Square Garden during halftime at a New York Knicks game. Guess where they’re from.
These activities almost lean more towards the influencer side of the Internet, but they’ve cracked the code in terms of humor and music promotion. Their videos are transfixing as the band walks towards the camera, utilizing a number of hand gestures that give off a frat-like vibe. Nasally voices have worked in the past to bring commercial success for many others; their predecessors could include Green Day, Blink-182, Wheatus, and Lit. Despite this, the band is earnest in interviews, expressive in their love of music with the knowledge to show for it. LAUNDRY DAY has been together since high school, not unlike Wallows, although their places of origin differ. The band themselves and many journalists before me have compared them to BROCKHAMPTON. They are genre-benders at heart, with their last full-length album releasing in 2023. Younger Than I Was Before goes through a day in high school from a band that graduated in 2020, bringing a mix of rock, pop, and hip-hop complete with skits for interludes.
This isn’t dissimilar to Wallows’ subject matter that sandwiches Nothing Happens. Think “1980s Horror Film” (whichever version) and, of course “Quarterback.” Wallows benefits largely from the fanbase they built early on, through their social media presence on Instagram. LAUNDRY DAY is doing the same thing now, aided by the short-form video content that was started by TikTok (sorry, Vine) and co-opted by Meta for Instagram. This is how the band has promoted their three most recent singles, teasing them in snippets and encouraging fans to stream once released. Their most recent singles “Why is everyone a DJ?,” “Damn Shame,” and “NO GO” follow a trajectory that suggests “album” without being too rote. “DJ” relies on distorted vocals and guitar, the lyrics solidifying LAUNDRY DAY’s place in the Gen Z establishment. “Damn Shame” sounds like something John Mayer cooked up, but his arrogance is nowhere near the song. The harmonies bring a sense of humility and earnestness that should be present in a burgeoning relationship. “NO GO” is a good mix of the two, leaning more into the chorded rock of the early 2000s. Philosophical questions for those under twenty-five are posed, but the maturation into adulthood is startlingly clear. High school is behind them.
LAUNDRY DAY has virtually equal followings on Instagram and TikTok, but the way TikTok’s algorithm works makes it much easier for their videos to go viral. Throughout the time I’ve been writing this, I’ve watched people prep for the TikTok ban, mourn hysterically when they no longer had access to the app, then celebrate when it came back, in some cases thanking known misogynist, rapist, homophobe, and xenophobe Donald Trump for working with TikTok’s owner ByteDance to keep the ban from happening. There’s a number of issues with this —propaganda used to be subtle— but I’m not here to constantly rail on TikTok, however much I want to. TikTok has caused me to ask myself, time and time again, what is it worth to expose yourself to the world? Is that something we all desire now? Exposure to every possible thing all the time?
I think the existence of LAUNDRY DAY poses other, related questions. If TikTok really did go away in the U.S., permanently, how are labels going to promote artists and help them build their fanbases if they can’t make them churn out thirty second videos with the catchiest snippets of songs? The band’s label is R&R Digital, which was launched independently in 2016, but is now a joint venture with Warner Bros. Records. Their “About” page states “We focus on the Internet” in reference to their promotion strategy. There are two sides of this coin. With constant exposure comes the pressure to cater exclusively to one audience. Rap artist Doechii has discussed this extensively in multiple interviews, stating the pressure she felt from record labels to conform to their standards and continue making music that would do well on TikTok. She has stated that this hindered her creativity and artistic vision and that only after stepping away from the music industry, was she able to put out her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024). The mixtape, very explicitly not an album, has had both critical and commercial success. Some songs have gone viral on TikTok, but the majority of them have not. I wouldn’t have listened to the mixtape in full had it not been for Spotify’s algorithm pushing the single “NISSAN ALTIMA” every time I finished Tyler, The Creator’s album, Chromakopia (2024). Algorithms are becoming increasingly odd and ineffective. Once I started listening to Doechii more, I was continually given the same songs by her, instead of being shown songs from her earlier discography. Exposure is good to an extent, but copycats eventually come into play and the concept of originality gets lost.
This repetitive trend across Internet platforms is not necessarily a new thing. Throughout 2024, there have been a number of articles published about “Dead Internet Theory,” a conspiracy theory about the lack of original content and interactions on the Internet that originated in 2016. An article by The Atlantic in 2021 happily debunked this, suggesting that the mere existence of Dead Internet Theory means that it cannot be true because the theory itself is an original piece of work. This was before Elon Musk bought Twitter, rechristened it “X,” and allowed bots to run rampant on the site. It was also before Meta’s insistence on implementing AI profiles that perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes on Instagram. As more short-form content becomes generated by artificial intelligence, thus fulfilling the lack of original content component of Dead Internet Theory, I try to engage with it as little as possible. To me, there have been very few benefits to short-form content in this world. Attention spans have been cut (mine included), media literacy is on a downward spiral, and there is a rapidly increasing demand for convenience, which exacerbates the already capitalist nature of America. Because of this, short-form content has become an important part of American business. Small businesses advertise on both TikTok and Instagram and big businesses create Internet personas to entice consumers (Duolingo bird, anyone?). This fact, combined with Instagram’s new development to turn their grid into rectangles lets everyone know what this is actually about. The TikTok ban was never about censorship— it was about money and a PR stunt for Donald Trump.
We’ve come to a point where consumerism dictates our every move and I’m personally sick of it. I’m tired of my Pinterest feed being rampant with TikToks. I want to teach myself how to consume without being fed. Self-discipline is a disappearing art and I don’t just mean in the field of academics, which is where its disappearance is currently most obvious. There have been so many times that I have listened to a song and wanted to listen to other music that sounded similar. Universal experience. So I typed in the song’s radio on Spotify and got music I had previously listened to, instead of new finds. It’s up to us to seek out albums, movies, and television shows. There’s obvious middle grounds to everything. Yes, take your friend’s recommendation. Yes, watching edits is fun. I’m thankful for the TikTok style of editing that has emerged over the past three years. In my bookmarks, there’s currently an edit of Gregory Peck that inspired me to watch Spellbound. But our own exploration is important for art to be able to grow.
I originally wrote this article because I didn’t like Wallows’ new single and I liked LAUNDRY DAY’s new one. I ended up with something entirely different. I have become such a big fan of both bands because I decided to listen to their albums after hearing a few songs from them and figuring, Well, that’s the whole point of an album, right? Word of mouth used to be an effective form of communication. I hope it still is. Tell your friend about that band you can’t stop listening to, even if it’s not really to their taste. We’re stuck in a world of trying something everyone else is doing. Is that really trying? Wake up and acknowledge your phone addiction. Break out of the mold.
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