Who's laughing now? Sibling band Durry sells out First Ave to top off 'dream come true' year

They famously formed their namesake band Durry out of boredom, after being stuck living together at their parents' Burnsville home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can imagine, then, how excited sibling bandmates Austin and Taryn Durry have been about busting out of the basement and spending the past year traveling the world with said band. They're ending their tour with a long-sold-out show Saturday at First Avenue.

"It really has just been a dream come true," singer/guitarist Austin Durry said of their bustling year, which also included the September release of Durry's debut album, "Suburban Legend."

His kid sister Taryn Durry (guitarist) added, "We've also been looking at this First Ave show as kind of an end of the era to the development of this album and this band. There's kind of a sense of, 'What now?' I don't know how we're going to top this."

The development phase of "Suburban Legend" jump-started back in September 2021, when Durry went viral with an unfinished song called "Who's Laughing Now" — ironically a slacker anthem about laughing in the face of failure. It blew up big time on TikTok even before it was formally recorded.

Millions of TikTok views and Spotify streams later, "Who's Laughing Now" is featured alongside 11 other similarly riled-up down-and-out rock anthems on the new album. Its stuck-in-suburbia theme continues in other tunes such as "Mall Rat," "Losers Club" and "TKO."

Those themes have, not surprisingly, been connecting with audiences around the country, as Austin and Taryn reported from a joint phone call from their tour bus heading to a gig in Atlanta last week. Here's an edited excerpt.

On selling out First Ave (from Austin Durry): "We were shocked to even be booked there. And then we thought, 'Man, can you imagine if it sold out?!' It sold out like five months ago. It's a humbling experience to realize how many people are really supporting us in our hometown scene. It's next-level, and we're so thankful."

How touring has changed the band (Austin): "It's been awesome to just get better at being performers, at knowing how to work with an audience, things you can't really prepare without just playing a bunch of shows."

(Taryn Durry): "A big part of what we do on tour is meet people. It's been really meaningful to us to get to talk to the people who are along for the ride with us. We honestly walk away every night just feeling really humble and really excited. It's a cool experience."

Why they took more than a year to finish their album (Austin): "'Who's Laughing Now' drew such a strong reaction early on for us, I kind of felt like everyone was thinking, 'OK, can the rest of the record match this?' We worked really hard to try to get there. We wrote way more songs than wound up on the record. We thought about every little moment. You only get one debut album, we wanted to make it count."

The real-life inspiration behind the song "Mall Rat" (Austin): "Being born and raised in Burnsville, we were Burnsville Center kids all the way. That was our spot. I actually worked at the Hot Topic there when I was 16. That's what that song was inspired by. I would pass the Cinnabon every day going to my shift. And I had friends working at other stores, and we'd all hang out after closing time."

Where the candy-bright yellow house on their album cover came from (Austin): "That is a house in Burnsville. I would hate for the owners to be harassed, so we don't want to make the location public. We just passed it driving, and it seemed like such a cartoonishly perfect house. We went and knocked on the door, like, 'Hey, would it be cool if we took some pictures outside the front of your house?' They were super-cool about it. We're going to give them a copy of the record when we get home."

On the irony of playing 'Who's Laughing Now' now that they're a success story (Austin): "The song started out very dark and cynical, but then the world proved me wrong. I wrote the third verse in the car on the way to the studio to record it after the song had already gone viral. So that verse is more optimistic, like, 'Wow, maybe things could work out.'

"Singing it now is awesome, because the crowd is singing along, and that song is the main reason they're there in the first place. It's very meta and very cool."

When: 8 p.m. Sat.

Where: First Avenue, Mpls.

Tickets: Sold out.

Online: Durrymusic.com.