“She’s one of those uniquely beautiful people—” Eli Scarpati starts to explain, before correcting himself. “Well, not people, because She’s not a person. She’s similar to one of those uniquely beautiful people, where anyone who meets Her is immediately in love and also completely terrified and viscerally, physically uncomfortable around Her, but when She leaves you’re missing Her and you’re like, ‘Aww, let’s bring Her around again!'”

His bandmate, Fig Regan, takes this description in a more abstract direction. “You know the feeling when your roommate gets out of the shower and they leave water on the ground and you step in it in your socks?” Regan asks. Before I can answer, she interrupts herself: “That’s something I used to do on purpose. When I was a kid I would get into the shower with socks on and I would take them off in the shower and I would slap them against the floor and they would go like—” she smacks her lips, imitating a wet-sock-slapping sound. “You know that noise?”

“She’s kinda like that. Like that sound specifically,” Scarpati says.

For the uninitiated, the “She” in question is Jennifer, the otherworldly beautiful god that brought Scarpati and Regan — members of the New York “trans slut rock” duo Um, Jennifer? — together. The two are attempting to explain Her lore to me in a Lower East Side bagel shop on a crisp, early spring day.

When I ask the two of them if Jennifer would be offended by them comparing Her to a wet sock smacking the floor, they both shake their heads. “I don’t know if She’s offended by anything we say,” Scarpati says. “Because She doesn’t care if we live or die. She’s not listening to us.”

“She hates our music, but She’s also very demanding that we get it out and serve Her ends,” Regan says, “I think She knows that it benefits Her because it brings more power to Her, but She doesn’t listen to it.”

“Like how Jesus probably hates Christian rock bands?” I counter. Regan and Scarpati agree, She’s sort of like that.

The closest precedent for their two-person-band origin story I can think of is that of anti-marketable cult hero pranksters Ween, and their chance childhood encounter with the demon god Boognish that kicked off their musical career. Um, Jennifer? share a similar penchant for absurd humor and audacious mythmaking.

On the abrasive, cacophonous interlude “Jennifer’s Dungeon,” Regan fully submits to Jennifer’s will, screaming, “Whatever you want, I’ll let you have it!” over a caterwaul of clattering drums. As the following “Keep It Tight” barrels in with brute force, Regan lays down all but her life to serve the punishing, godly bastion of idealized femininity that is Jennifer.

Hot off Um, Jennifer?’s 2024’s Girl Class EP, their debut album, helpfully titled Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark, is out this Friday. (The video for new single “So Sick” premieres today.) The band’s debut LP is a collection of — not exactly praise songs, but music made in service of their Lord and Savior Jennifer, a bad bitch goddess who could not care less about the two punk prophets singing her gospel.

Regan tells me that she’s currently reading Larry Kramer’s The American People: “It’s about this extreme form of Puritanism and the idea that God hates you and that’s why you’re here and all you can do is feel so bad about yourself. Jennifer’s like that.”

Scarpati adds, “She’s like the worst parts of religion and the best parts of clubbing.”

“She’s like if Charli XCX did a Boiler Room set at the Vatican,” Regan summarizes, before busting out her best Charli impression with an improvised “Club Classics” parody: “I wanna dance with Jen, Jen, Jen.”

“Jennifer is very similar to all the women I’ve loved,” Scarpati laughs. “I love an angry, beautiful woman.” This reminds me, oddly enough, of Anthony Keidis — who’s said that Dani California is an amalgamation of every woman he’s ever been with, and how almost every Red Hot Chili Peppers song is about her. So imagine the Red Hot Chili Peppers if Anthony Keidis not only sang about Dani California, but worshipped her as a deity — that’s Um Jennifer? (Kind of).

Scarpati says he’s drawn to the gray area between “the real person and the person in the song,” and that’s part of his rationale for channeling feelings of real-life love and heartbreak into songs about Jennifer, using the character he and Regan have created as a vessel for part-autobiography, part mythology.

“I’ve been writing love letters halfway to Jennifer and halfway to the person I’m in love with and covering my guitar and my pedalboard with them,” He tells me. “I wonder if, like, if a photographer takes a close-up photo of my guitar and what it says, and if they post that if [Scarpati’s partner] will see it and how much she’ll know — like, ‘I love you Jennifer! I’ll always love you’ — that it’s totally written to her. It’s a funny line, like both are totally true. It’s fiction and it’s not.”

This personal-creative tightrope-walking is par for the course for Scarpati, who, earlier in our conversation declared himself and his approach to performance as “pro-oversharing, anti-privacy, and hyper-personal.” He describes writing himself or people he knows into songs as, “like getting to enter the movie you’re watching.”

If songwriting is Scarpati’s way of playing chicken with how much he can reveal, Regan prefers using the sheen of satire, allegory, alternative personas to take the long way back to the truth. On the fiery post-punk single “Fishy,” Regan plays a part-sea creature, part-“hottest fucking bitch in New York City,” to satirize gender dysphoria and impossible beauty standards; on the zany, motormouthed “Car Wash,” she’s a revenge seeker who’s got her sights set on her enemy’s mother (“You’re in the Car Wash/ I’m planning dinner with your mom/ We’re at Target/ You’re perusing wikifeet.com/ In the background of every family photograph”). Adopting these different character perspectives in her songs has helped Regan connect with the more expressive parts of herself that feel out of reach elsewhere.

“Pre-transition I felt super disconnected from my emotions,” Regan says. “Songwriting is a way to kind of figure out who I am now with my different body and my different brain. I love myself onstage. And that’s not to say I don’t love myself offstage, but when I’m performing it’s easier.” She says that channeling the untouchable, supercharged energy of Jennifer helps with this: “When I’m getting all angry and excited onstage, that’s Jennifer speaking through me.”

Um, Jennifer?’s debut single “Girl Class” lampoons the “rules” of girlhood. It starts with a skit in which Regan calls Jennifer on the phone (with Scarpati listening in over her shoulder) to ask for her help. “I’ve just been having a lot of trouble being a girl, and I think you’re really good at being a girl, and I was wondering if you wanted to hang out,” she stutters. Unsure if the goal is to be with Jennifer or to become her (or both), the track follows her discovery of the arbitrariness and absurdity of gender performance: “Step 1: Say you’re a girl/ Step 2: You are a girl/ Step 3: Listen to me/ Fuck you! It’s a girl class!” goes the bridge, before exploding into a rambunctious chorus.

On the album’s back half, Scarpati takes lead vocals for “Went On T,” a bouncy pop punk song about the ultimately worthwhile challenges that came with medically transitioning. He’s equal parts silly and sincere — he’s become a truer version of himself, and that version of himself just happens to have a sexier voice and bigger muscles. “No one knows me like I know my goddamn self,” he sings in a triumphant chorus that celebrates self-actualization and trans joy.

“We’re had a couple people message us saying that they started HRT because of our music,” says Regan. The band enjoyed a moment of semi-virality with “Girl Class,” which opened their music up to larger audiences. Regan and Scarpati are social-media savvy, and they’ve used Instagram and TikTok to connect with fans in a way that somehow doesn’t feel contrived or forced in the age of artists-slash-influencers opening up their front-facing cameras to ask, “Did I just write the song of the summer?” or to tell their fans a sob story about how their label won’t let them release their latest single until a snippet of it gets 10,000 likes.

“I love social media. I love online. I love the internet,” Scarpati flashes a big, toothy smile before adding, “I mean, obviously it’s evil and horrific and it’s ruining our lives.” He admits that he doesn’t actually use social media for much other than “work and haircuts,” but he thinks that at its best, social media is a tool for connecting with people who might not otherwise have the opportunity for that connection.

“It’s a hopeful thing,” says Scarpati. “And it’s crazy how easy it is to share that with people. And it’s dumb and it’s simple and it doesn’t have to be that deep, but when you do it for the right reasons it affects people in a massive way.”

Scarpati and Regan are well aware of how impactful it can be for young, closeted or newly-out queer and trans fans living in more repressive or isolated environments to see these two openly trans musicians making art and living exciting, fulfilling lives. Finding each other through New York’s DIY scene was a huge part of making this Scarpati and Regan’s reality. They give a shoutout to the LGBTQ-owned North Brooklyn music venue Purgatory, as well as New York bands like Canvas Collective, Raavi, and Pop Music Fever Dream for making the city’s music scene as exciting and inclusive as it’s been to them.

“There’s a lot of appreciation for the grind and for people that care about their art. It’s an unusually welcoming community compared to other places. Everyone kinda just lets you do your thing,” Scarpati says.

Prior to forming Um, Jennifer?, Scarpati was in the indie pop band Moonkissed, while Regan was working on a solo project that she describes as “very singer-songwriter-y.” A former theatre kid and a longtime fan of guitar powerhouses like St. Vincent and Illuminati Hotties, she wanted to start a rock band but the opportunity had yet to present itself—until she met Scarpati through the city’s DIY community: “Seeing Moonkissed shows was kinda the first time where I was like ‘This is a scene that I wanna be a part of.'”

Scarpati’s influences overlap with the guitar rock leanings of Regan’s taste, but he says his biggest inspiration comes from the American Songbook and early vocal jazz. “Not in the most literal way,” he clarifies, “But in terms of the logic of a song and how to approach it. It’s really about the bones of the song. I like an A-B-A-B format, I like the symmetry and simplicity of it. I love a song-y kinda song.”

Nowhere is the musical chemistry between Regan and Scarpati more apparent than on the mishmashed “Old Grimes.” Over heavy percussion and flitting, floss-thin guitars on the verses, Regan’s pissy, eye-rolling vocals come through like the warped VHS of a low-budget horror movie stuck in the player: “Had a dream about disaster/ Carved into the plaster/ Too much Ari Aster.” A record-scratching sound effect disrupts Regan’s nightmare, replacing the track’s fake-out post-punk intro with a ’60s teeny bopper melody sung by Scarpati. His voice is draped in the same fuzz and Regan’s, but the effect is more like tuning into the Oldies station on a restored radio: “I’m toeing a hard line/ Singing, would you be mine?/ Listening to old Grimes.” It’s the perfect storm of anachronism, the band’s exterior peeled back to reveal the structure of their creative DNA. When the duo take turns singing backup for one another on the final chorus — capping it off with a cheeky interpolation of a line from Grimes’ signature song, “Oblivion” — they’re at their most dynamic.

Um Jennifer? like to end their live renditions of “Old Grimes” by turning the track into a full-blown “Oblivion” cover, an idea that originated (as some of their best ones do) as a joke between the two band members. “That just came out of us thinking it’d be so funny if we did that,” says Scarpati. “And it is funny, but it’s also always a moment in the show where people are like ‘Oh shit, they’re playing that song!'”

“I know to keep going with an idea if I find it funny, because that means I’m a little bit uncomfortable with it,” Regan adds. Humor is essential to Um, Jennifer?’s songwriting and performance process. Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark plays out as a punk rock buddy comedy starring Scarpati and Regan as its unlikely heroes.

They tell me about the one-night-only cabaret at Joe’s Pub that they’ve planned, a variety show featuring comedians Jes Tom and Esther Fallick, as well as drag artist and musical theater actor Anania Williams.

“You go in there and you lose yourself and you’re moshing — we all know that feeling, and we’re gonna get that,” Scarpati says of Um, Jennifer?’s shows — including a forthcoming album release show, separate from the cabaret — but the band wanted to try something a little different before touring their debut LP. “We wanted to not just be like, ‘Here’s another indie rock show, here’s another punk show,'” Scarpati explains. “We thought having people sit down and observe the set and having comedians and having this different energy would deepen the whole experience.”

A cabaret may seem like an unconventional choice for most contemporary DIY bands, but in the hands of a band that can pull it off, it’s an exciting one. It’s refreshing to see a band embrace goofiness and theatricality in ways that indie rock’s irony-addicted tradition often seems vehemently averse to. But that’s what makes Um, Jennifer? so thrilling — they aren’t afraid to look goofy, and their cartoonish, fantastical storytelling never betrays their sensitivity. You don’t always know what to expect with a band like Um, Jennifer?, and that’s the fun part.

Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark is out 4/25 on Final Girl. Pre-order it here.