Four grown men in pink velour tracksuits and bright yellow sports shoes got a tour of New York’s City Hall from none other than mayor Zohran Mamdani. One of them, freshly shipped from India, spoke with the celebrity mayor in Hindi.
“Main bata nahi sakta mujhe kitni khushi ho rahi hai (I cannot explain how happy I am),” Darshan Magdum, member of the four-person band Boy Throb, said to Mamdani.
“Haan, yaar (yes, bro),” came the gentle reply.
The boyband performed in the City Hall bullpen, but the mayor’s Hindi remained the highlight.
The Viral Spiral this week is the culmination of a year-long digital saga that was Boy Throb’s attempt to get Darshan to the US.
“Now that Darshan is united with the group, can Mamdani be the remote green screen band member? I want to see his smiling face floating above them at a concert like Baby Sun,” read a comment.
“I can’t believe Mayor Mamdani got to meet Boy Throb,” someone else said.
The verdict in the comments was simple, and it was unanimous: “Mamdani a confirmed throbber.”
For the hermits who somehow missed the adventure, Boy Throb is made up of Anthony Key, Evan Papier, Zachary Sobania, and Darshan.
The fourth member was stuck with a pending US visa application, and the band’s solution was to make the problem into content.
They posted cover songs with rewritten lyrics, begging the internet to follow them so Darshan could come to America. One of them, ‘Darshan Is the Man We Need’, a riff on Olivia Dean’s ‘Man I Need’ posted in November 2025, is the reel that got me invested.
“Can you be the fans we need?” read the caption.
The band said that Darshan’s immigration lawyer had told them a million followers would help his visa case. About 10 months and a million followers later, the words came through.
“POV: Your band is at the center of geopolitics,” the band posted with a song titled ‘Darshan Coming to America’.
“This is going to be my kid’s one direction,” a comment proudly declared.
I remember Darshan best from his pandemic-era reels, where he sang English songs in his Indian accent, his voice heavily corrected and autotuned. It was still cute enough to get double-taps.
Before the virality, Boy Throb made songs with green screens and Darshan cutouts, and dragged the cardboard version of him to gigs so he wouldn’t be left out of the frame. Five official releases on Spotify, one collaboration with Kesha, and countless reels later. Darshan finally made it.
The posts were always the real product.
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How real is the throb?
The first Instagram video went up in October 2025, with four men in matching pink, aspirationally synchronised choreography, and a glorious awkwardness in the execution that no boy band manager would have let past rehearsal.
Then came the Rehearsal Tour, where the other three members performed and Darshan would join over Zoom or appear as a cutout.
The visa news itself arrived as an Instagram clip of Darshan on a FaceTime call, the band screaming in joy. A US visa for an Indian man under the current administration? It’s a modern-day miracle.
“Fully believe we are witnessing history right now,” said the comments, appropriately excited.
The covers, to my ear, are the best thing the band has done. The originals are a different story. They’re catchy, club-friendly, and perfectly pleasant songs, but I could not hum a single one back to you.
On 16 October, the band organised a free “Darshan Day” event at American Dream in New Jersey, the first time all four of them stood in the same room, and debuted a new single called ‘4gether’.
The title is not subtle. Nothing about Boy Throb is subtle, including the pink-and-yellow uniform.
While Boy Throb has many well-wishers, not everyone is thrilled with them.
“Funny name and all but none of the members are interesting enough for me to pay serious attention,” someone wrote on X.
But the throbbers don’t seem to care.
“The whole world is throbbing right now,” wrote one fan on X.
Then there is the theory a dear cinephile friend just told me about: “Boy Throb is a Nathan Fielder psyop.”
Fielder is the Canadian comedian behind the show The Rehearsal, which is built on elaborate, deadpan real-world setups that run for so long they stop looking like jokes. “You need to watch the show to get it,” my friend insists.
I am not as invested in the band’s music, to be completely honest, nor do I care about Fielder’s productions. (I will not apologise for the latter.)
I was here for the plot. Boy Throb is an absurd and wholesome presence in a timeline saturated with slop and dystopian news. But with the visa here, I remain unsure if the band will be able to maintain their virality—what with its subpar music, loss of the visa plotline, and, as a particularly hateful colleague put it, “zero hot members.”
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)