014: Um, Jennifer?

Written and Edited by Eve Mikkelson, host of Brooklyn Buzz on WPIR   Photography: Julia Khoroshilov (top image), Kat Lyon (exterior image), Nolan Knight (white image)
Interview on 5/14/2026
[Names linked within text will be colored]

Fig Regan and Eli Scarpati discuss the newest and hottest music in the trans-slut rock genre from their band Um, Jennifer? After rolling out a few spectacular singles, their eagerly-awaited EP, Dirty Twice, is now available for all ears to enjoy. Not only do they talk about the album’s portrayal of a full relationship from beginning to end, but they also discuss how liberating it is to mess with your gender, how to have fun promoting the work you’re proud of, and how to live confidently by controlling your own self perception. If you’re interested in the NYC trans and queer music scene, this is the band and interview for you. “Girl we are in the water, let’s go swimming.”

Firstly, would you like to introduce yourselves?

Fig: I’m Fig Regan. I’m six foot, brown hair, blue eyes. I’m of Irish-Catholic descent. That’s really it. *laughs*

Eli: I’m Eli Scarpati, and I use he/him pronouns. I play guitar and I sing in the band, as does Fig. I am not of Irish-Catholic descent, make sure you write that down. *laughs*

How would you describe your music for those who might not know it yet?

Fig: Trans-slut-rock. Are we allowed to say that? When people ask what our music sounds like, I’m like “indie… punky… sometimes I scream.”

If someone were only going to listen to ONE of your songs to encapsulate your vibe, what song would you recommend they listen to?

Fig: Probably Jennifer Journals. Deep cut.

Eli: *laughs* First song out, not exactly a song!

Fig: It’s a song!

Eli: I think of it as something else, personally. I just think of it as Jennifer Journals.

Uh oh, first fight caught on record! *laughs*

Fig: It’s a journal. It’s its own entity.

Well, I’ve always wanted to know, how did you two meet each other?

Eli: We met at a friend’s birthday party.

An immediate connection?

Eli: Well, no not really…

Fig: *laughs*

Eli: I sort of friend-schemed Fig. I went to a party and I only knew the host so I was just grooving. But I’m not very shy so I just went up to them like “I pick you guys to be my friends at this party.” Then I kept seeing Fig at other parties around the city and I kept going up to her being like “It’s me! Your friend!” and Fig was sort of cat-like at first…

Fig: I don’t think I was cat-like! That’s just how friendships go! *laughs*

Eli: I liked it. We became friends after all of that.

How did you realize you wanted to be in a band together?

Eli: We were working on a show series together. I was in an old band and Fig had come on as an actress doing performance art for this residency at Baby’s All Right. We were spending week after week in rehearsals for this creative project. If I remember this correctly, you posted something… We don’t talk about this usually!

Fig: Wait, I don’t remember this at all.

Eli: I was never sure if you remembered or not. But you posted on your story “I want to be in a band.” I swiped up. But we have never told that. I’ve just kinda left it, I didn’t know if you remembered. *laughs*

Fig: I totally forgot. I love an instagram call-out. That’s the way to achieve your dreams.

A lot of students are big fans of you. I thought a lot more people would be bumping to you in real life [when Um, Jennifer? played live at Spring Fest 2026] but it was just people coming up to us afterwards saying “oh my god, was that really them?”

ALL: *laughs*

Eli: That’s so awesome. There is a funny cultural thing in our generation where people are really considerate of not wanting to go up and bother someone.

Fig: Roan’s law. Can we talk about her?

ALL: *laughs*

Eli: It’s really sweet, and I say to people often: You definitely aren’t going to bother us! We are a very small band and it’s very exciting for us that people like our music.

Your music is very chaotic, emotional, funny, and vulnerable all at once, which is very impressive. When you’re writing your songs, which do you think comes first?

Fig: It’s always different. I wrote a song last night that started with guitar chords and just moosh-mouthed my way through some lyrics – or at least what sounded like lyrics – and then I listened back and picked out the words that sounded emotionally charged. It created a story out of that.

Eli: Yeah, I’d agree it's always different. It’s funny thinking about this next to how we met each other, because in my mind it is a lot like developing a kind of relationship. Do you ever have a friend group and you start to think “Wait, when and how did we all become friends?” That is what I would liken it to. I was telling Fig the other day, I wrote a song and it was like trying to catch a fish. Whatever the initial entry point shows itself as, you try to grab onto that and develop around it. Sometimes it will totally change in the process too.

You possibly have an upcoming EP, right? [As of the date of this interview release, the EP is now out and available!] We heard that it was sort of meant to tell a story from the beginning to the end of a relationship. I don’t know if that’s classified information still…

Eli: No, we will talk about it! The idea was that all the different songs are from different places in the relationship.

Fig: Oh my god, it IS like that, isn’t it?

ALL: *laughs*

Eli: Yeah, a song like “Stunning” to me is very much about this beginning spark of desire. It's this idea of the way someone makes you feel when it's this new thing. “Bushwick Ratbag” isn’t romantic, but it is from knowing someone too well. You see someone deeply and start to know the unsavory layers of them. The EP takes all these different positions in time. There’s breakup things, new things, something like “Comedy 42.” Fig wrote the lyrics to that song but for me it always resonates differently. The line “it ends with me but not with you” shows this peace and acceptance at the end of a relationship. I’m really excited for this EP. I think there are a lot of different genres, feelings, perspectives in time, but there is something that feels like a cohesive line of truth throughout it.

I also wanted to mention: I know for a lot of queer and trans listeners, seeing artists like you exist openly genuinely means so much. You write a lot of songs on the subject too, which is fantastic because it feels like there aren’t many songs about the trans experience out there still. For your audience, especially younger like a lot of the students here that love you, what do you hope they take away from your music in that regard?

Fig: I hope it gets them thinking about their gender and their place in the world. If you’re a guy and you don’t like being a guy – you don’t like the interactions and weight of masculinity – you don’t have to rock with that!! *laughs* You just don’t have to! Try HRT, just for a little bit. When I started HRT, I was just trying it out. I didn’t know shit about shit. It ended up being the right thing for me, and I don’t have any regrets about it. Obviously, that isn’t everyone’s experience but I think everyone should feel like they can explore. Especially at a time when people are trying to take the fun out of fucking with your gender.

Eli: Oh my god, yeah.

Fig: As if trying HRT for a couple months is a big deal. It’s ridiculous.

Eli: There’s HRT in our chicken. *laughs* I agree. I didn’t know I was gay or anything until I went to college. The first introduction to trans people for me was some daytime TV network that was warning you of the dangers of your child being trans. It had the feeling of drug addiction, so I thought it was this fatal, monstrous thing. So I avoided it like the plague. I came out as a lesbian and I remember saying to myself out loud “but I’m not trans.” I drew a stark line. It’s just funny to think about that now. But, there is a real heaviness and deep-seated bigotry that exists and we all live with. All of us are having to contend with that for ourselves, for other people, and we are continuously trying to undo this huge mistake of hate. I think for me, meeting Fig and finding our friends, finding the trans comedy scene, making our music… laughter has been a huge part of that. I was talking with a couple of transmasc friends recently about how people fearmonger about testosterone and transitioning. “You’re gonna mangle your natural state” or whatever. That’s when I first said, “there are so many hormones in our food!” We are naturally evolving all the time, our hormones always change. Old Italian women grow beards, and old Italian men have fat asses and breasts. *laughs* This is something that happens naturally. We are probably organically changing all the time anyway, and probably also in negative ways.

Fig: Like fucking GLP-1s. It’s so fucking freaky.

Eli: It's just all human mess that is happening. We can look at it with judgement or without judgement. I think letting ourselves off the hook a little bit and saying “it's not that big of a deal,” is really important. You can transition however you want, it’ll be ok, just get through your life without putting a ton of extra stress and hate on ourselves. I hope people feel freedom, levity, and perspective that life is bigger than our tiny self-involved things.

Fig: There is such a fear of regret. What I always come back to is: If you took steps to maybe make yourself happy, that’s the whole point. That’s all it is. 

In a similar vein, the venn diagram of queer space and music space is so interesting and exciting to me. What do you think the queer community within the music scene looks like right now? Do you have a favorite gay music venue?

Eli & Fig (in sync): Purgatory!

Fig: Get me to Purgatory every day of the week. We are in a specific scene where we have branded ourselves as a trans band. But all my friends are gay and making music. Check them out! Estelle Allen, one of the best.

Eli: I love the Canvas Collective. We played early shows with them. Another trans band. This band Raavi is really really good.

Fig: Shout out Grumpy.

I saw Grumpy at Rubulad in the fall and they were awesome.

Eli: Rubulad is another hub I feel like. And I would say the same: All my friends are gay. Honestly it is sometimes funny! I’m just so in the queer music scene that I legitimately forget cis straight people do music.

Fig: I haven't interfaced with a cis man in months.

ALL: *laughs*

When I saw you guys play at Baby’s All Right, I was in a phase of obsession with a couple Twin Flame songs, and I was looking at your drummer thinking “Oh my god, that’s a Twin Flamer right there.”

Eli: Yes! Twin Flame fucking rocks.

You also mentioned branding earlier and I wanted to shout out how your social media presence is so hilarious. It feels very self-aware and satirical. It’s so great. Online music promotion is such a hot topic right now, could you talk about any self-promotion aspects that you secretly hate or even secretly love?

Eli: We talk about this a lot because I know many musicians really struggle with it. I think on one hand it’s just work, and that is difficult like anything else. But I think people get bogged down because it feels difficult to see yourself from an external perspective. It is like admitting you want to be liked. “I’m posting this thing because I need you to see it and I want you to like it.” I think that feels very vulnerable for people. But for me, I really fight back anything that feels difficult in terms of being perceived, because I am what I am and this is just the way that it is. You have to communicate with the people you are making these things with, too. Like, “Hey, you can make fun of me for XYZ, but I’m not a short king,” for example. *laughs* There are boundaries to establish, online too. “Here is the way that I see myself, and here is the way that I would like for you to see me. I have no shame in that, and I think you’re going to like it.” I don’t like the ego insecurity spiral. I think it’s boring. There are more interesting ways to spiral.

Fig: List them.

ALL: *laughs*

Fig: I, on the other hand… *laughs* I really struggle with that. I admire Eli’s strength and resilience and point of view on the matter. I really struggled in the beginning with shyness and performance shyness. “No, no, don’t look at this thing that I worked really hard on, even though I care about it deeply.” I’ve come around to what Eli is saying though. It is much cooler to fucking arrive for the stuff that you make and go through whatever means possible to make it be seen. While also acknowledging sometimes we don’t want to make videos, so we don’t. *laughs* There has been an interesting shift in social media in general where it used to be quantity over quality. It’s totally changed now. I’ve been seeing a shift of people putting lots and lots of effort into single videos, to where people are putting out what feels like movies maybe once a week.

Eli: I also want to say, to your credit, I have had this conversation with many different bands and people. I’ve said “Of course it is a hard feeling, but here is another way if you want out of that feeling…” and Fig has been the only person to have taken that advice.

Fig: I mean like, girl we are in the water, let’s go swimming.

ALL: *laughs*

Fig: You know what I mean, though? We are all in the soup of social media. It is 2026, let’s use it. These are the tools that we have, and if we were born in the 90s or 80s, we would be Daniel Johnston handing out cassettes at shows. But that’s not what it is anymore. I think Daniel Johnston would hate what we are doing now, but that’s beside the point.

ALL: *laughs*

That’s so real, this has shifted my way of understanding it already.

Eli: It lets us all off the hook, in a way.

I saw the video where Fig wants to spend more time with Eli’s mom or something and it really took me out!

ALL: *laughs*

Eli: *laughs* That is totally inappropriate for you to bring up!

You pause in the middle to help the person in a wheelchair through the door. *laughs*

Eli: We are just smiling at each other, yeah. That was a one in a million chance. So funny…

Of course, NYC is a huge music scene. What’re your favorite parts about being in the big apple as a musician?

Fig: Everything moves so quickly. It’s awesome. Also, I was hanging out with my friends yesterday and I had a kind of zoom-out moment where I was thinking: This is the only place where you get to be close friends, confidants, and collaborators with the most talented people. Like, the most insane, ground-shifting music that is coming out right now. And I get to go over to their house and share soup with them.

Eli: Yeah, totally. Whenever I go to LA, I think “Wow, it’s so beautiful here. I would be so happy if I lived here.” I kind of think of it as my beautiful mistress who I go and visit. But then I return to NYC and it’s like my old, unique wife who hates me and I hate her but I will never leave her. *laughs* There is something so deeply romantic to me about this city, for the good, the bad, and the ugly. There is so much that we know is horrible – the smells, the heat, the concrete, the grime, the brutality of it all – but there are moments for us where the light hits a tree in the middle of Manhattan and it feels like there is nothing like it. My favorite coffee shop, the parks, the freaks… There is something here that is endlessly inspiring. I can go on a walk around the block and feel a million different things and have a million different coincidences happen.

Fig: It is an intensely magical place, in a real way.

Did you both grow up here?

Eli: I grew up in the suburbs outside the city.

Fig: I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina originally. The least south of the south. *laughs*

And you already mentioned some people, but is there a dream NYC-based artist you would love to spend more time with? Or maybe that you already have?

Fig: The first band that came to mind was Fcukers. *laughs* Another band I’m super into is Sex Week. They are so good and the sweetest people in the entire world. I would go on tour with them. Lena Dunham, take me on your book tour.

Eli: Oh my god, shout out. That would be fucking awesome. She isn’t New York based but I would love to work with Chapell Roan. She is my favorite artist ever. And I served her at my restaurant, so we know each other. *laughs*

Fig: Do you know where Dijon is from? … If he is from NY, tell him to reach out to us.

ALL: *laughs*

Fig: Oh, the Strokes! LCD Soundsystem. The big ones.

All fantastic picks, wow. That brings us near the end, but before we wrap up, is there anything you would like to shout out? We already talked about your EP a little.

Eli: For this EP, we are going to release a bunch of singles with music videos throughout the summer. We are really stoked about this EP.

Fig: It rips.

Eli: It really does rip. *laughs* From every surprising angle!

WPIR’s Lili Leoung, who was overseeing the interview: Where did you come up with the name “Um, Jennifer?”

Fig: It was in a script that I had written in my phone. It was a line in the script and it was just one of those perfect moments where I said the phrase to Eli and we both went, “Well, that’s it!” What were some other ideas?

Eli: People Pleaser.

Fig: Right, that was my solo project.

Eli: We threw around the idea of being a “5th wave emo band.” *laughs*

Fig: Has there been a 4th wave? *laughs*

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.