Sombr
They say an overnight success is never overnight. You don’t see the months or years an artist toils behind the scenes, waiting for the lucky break that makes it all seem instantaneous. For sombr—the stage name of burgeoning indie-pop artist Shane Boose—that adage is mostly true. He’d been honing his craft for years by the time he broke through the noise. But finding success was ultimately a matter of going to sleep anonymous, and waking up a viral sensation.
Listen to sombr's new single, "makes me want you" and don't miss the chance to see him perform live on tour.
sombr photographed by Anthony Giovanni, Fashion by Edwin J Ortega, Grooming by Faye Celeste , Words by Bailey Bujnosek, Shot at HYPE studios
Sombr wears Alexander McQueen
Sombr wears a Burberry jacket with Egon lab pants.
sombr wears John Varvatos
Like most people in 2020, Sombr felt isolated by the global pandemic. He dived into his art as an escape.
A vocal music major at New York’s famed LaGuardia High School by day and a songwriter by night, he used Logic to produce original music in his bedroom on the Lower East Side. It was little more than a fun hobby—until he made “caroline.”
“I finished that song and listened through it, and I was like, ‘This has got to be the best song I've ever made,’” he recalls. Proud of the result, he uploaded the song to Spotify and featured it in TikTok. The amateur artist went to sleep expecting a few hundred views, and maybe a couple of hate comments. “At the time, I was getting made fun of at school for making music, which was crazy because I literally went to a music school,” he says, his tone a mix of self-effacing humor and disbelief. “But I was just like, I might as well try posting it on the Internet. I'll probably get bullied, but whatever. I'll just delete it if it doesn't work.”
Thankfully, “Caroline” worked. When he woke up, the then-16-year-old had a hit. Hundreds of thousands of people had watched his TikTok, and they liked what they heard. Within a week, sombr’s unassuming single amassed over a million streams on Spotify. Record labels flooded his DMs. He and his family were flown out to LA and, as he sums up, “Nothing was the same after that.”
Not content to be a one-hit wonder, the New York native released a rapid string of follow-up singles that resonated as much or more than the haunting angst-pop track that first launched him to viral fame. At 17, one month into 2023, he signed to Warner Records. His debut EP in another life followed not long after, crash-landing in September of that year to positive reviews. Songs like the electro-laced “Why are we like this” and the lush, confessional record “Ivy” lent new depths to his artistry.
in another life introduced sombr as a mature voice on the indie-pop scene, a product of a childhood spent entranced by Bon Iver and Radiohead, The Velvet Underground, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Not the typical Tyke playlist, but just what the budding artist needed to hear. It was his father who put him on the rotation of alt-rock, folk, and indie that informs his work to this day—and who inspired him to make music in the first place. “My earliest memories are of my dad playing instruments around the house,” sombr recalls. “[Music] has always felt like a part of me, for as long as I can remember. It's always been in my blood.” As he got older and began discovering artists on his own, he added Phoebe Bridgers and The 1975 into the mix—though he still has a soft spot for Radiohead.
Listening to music turned into producing music. At age 11, the future virtuoso crafted what he dubs his “unlistenable” early beats on the program GarageBand. “At first, I wanted to be a rapper or a rap producer. [...] But eventually, I switched to Logic and found my sound.” A summer job scooping ice cream helped him save up to buy serious recording equipment. sombr’s bedroom was officially a DIY studio—now, the real work could begin.
While he honed in on the indie tunes he’s come to be known for, he started his classical voice training at LaGuardia. The Italian and German arias he learned there don’t exactly spring forth from his wistful canon of sad-boy anthems, but they were a key foundation for the sombr project. “[My training] helped me build to a point where I’m able to sing for an hour straight in my live shows,” he says. “I think my voice wouldn’t be as good on my recordings if I hadn’t done it.”
Sombr wears a vintage pilot jacket with John Varvatos pants
At just 19 years old, Sombr has made the most of his teen years, and the promising artist has plenty of time to keep growing and evolving. He’s bent on it. With two EPs under his belt after the release of 2024’s Savior, the multi-instrumentalist admits he was “kind of getting bored and hitting a ceiling” with his music. The recent single “makes me want you” was an antidote to that early career ennui.
Noting many of his past releases are stripped back and slow (see: melancholic single “would’ve been you”), he explains: “I just wanted to take a little shift for one song, and go in more of a beat direction. I started ‘makes me want you’ in my home studio, built out the song, and leaked it on the Internet.” Such leaks aren’t unique to the cult-followed indie artist’s process. Social media, and TikTok in particular, has embedded itself into the modern music industry landscape for better and worse. In sombr’s case, it’s for the better. “People seemed to really like it,” he continues, “so I brought in my collaborator and co-producer Tony Berg, and we finished it and made it what it is today.”
Berg, who co-produced both of Phoebe Bridgers’ solo albums, is a perfect match for sombr’s wallowing-at-the-disco flair—as “makes me want you” proves. The throwback track features echoing vocals and an addictive beat that clashes just right with sombr’s signature falsetto. Lyrically, it’s not dissimilar from past releases. The sentiments of love and heartbreak, frequent topics for the emerging artist, are as present as ever. “You don’t care about me/ but that makes me want you,” he vocalizes in the airy chorus. Compare this to the chorus of “do i ever cross your mind,” an August release where he begs the titular question and adds, “‘Cause you still cross mine.” The classic game of pretending to care the least, while being unable to stop caring, gains a new energy in his oeuvre.
Sombr wears a John Varvatos suit
sombr’s Spotify bio reads “late nights and young romance.”—he’s committed to the all-lowercase aesthetic at this point, as is his target audience. Plainspoken and poetic at turns, his lyrics are infused with an earnestness of feeling that might evoke images of an old soul, but could only flower from a still-fresh wound of young love. “I'm definitely inspired by a lot of films and books,” he shares of his songwriting process. “Then, obviously, there's a lot of inspiration from personal life. A lot of past romance, past relationships, that I’ve been writing about for years at this point.”
This authenticity is the calling card of a Gen Z artist. When the app that makes you famous is also the launchpad for lyrical conspiracies, and fans painstakingly deconstruct every detail of a song according to its creator’s personal life, PR stunts and manufactured drama don’t fly. Younger audiences, indie audiences, have always craved the raw and real—but platforms like TikTok, where industry plants and calculated attempts at virality are sussed out and ridiculed, have amplified the demand for authenticity tenfold.
sombr delivers it. Being unafraid to channel real stories and emotions into his confessional tracks is what helped him land his millions of monthly listeners. On his first tour across North America earlier this year, songs like the evocative “savior,” in which he sings, “There was a day that we shared a room/ Now all we share is the moon,” particularly resonated with fans. The experience was an eye-opening one, even for someone who’s been enamored with music since before he could speak.
“The North American tour was the craziest experience of my life, surrounded by an amazing band and crew,” he reminisces. “As exhausting as it was, it was the most rewarding thing. [...] The numbers online only do so much for you, but visualizing that with all the faces in all these cities is just crazy. I’m super grateful for that.”
Fans who missed out on his first tour won’t have to wait too long for their chance to see sombr live. He’ll be joining another TikTok-famous artist on the road in 2025: sirenic pop sensation Nessa Barrett. The 22-year-old “Passenger Princess” singer will be promoting her sophomore album, Aftercare, with 36 dates across North America and Europe. sombr is slated as the supporting act for several of the European dates, meaning he’ll be jet-setting from his LA home to the likes of Dublin, London, and Prague.
Ready as he is to see the world (like the many non-famous 19 year olds taking a gap year to backpack the continent), until next spring, sombr remains laser-focused on making new music. He’s got more in the works right now. Thinking about his ambitions for the rest of this year and beyond, he shares, “i want to just keep giving my supporters musical content.”
sombr takes music seriously—more seriously, if you can believe it, than he did when he was first young and hungry, trying to make it big in between geometry class and Italian arias. He relocated from New York to LA after signing to Warner, an isolating experience. Not only was he as far as he could be from the place where he grew up, but he couldn’t drive. (Native New Yorkers don’t need to.) Still, once the initial culture shock wore off, sombr found the bright side of the Golden State.
“I do think it’s a lot more peaceful. The weather is better, and it’s a better place to be around other creatives and musicians. There’s a lot more going on here,” he acknowledges. “But I would love to move back to New York one day.”
For now, as a budding musician, LA is the place to be. sombr is completely immersed in the scene here, perpetually writing new music, recording, collaborating, and studying his idols’ hits. Rinse and repeat, with a live show thrown in for good measure. Asked what he does outside of making music, the teen shares that he, well, doesn’t. “It's kind of sad,” he admits, with a half-joking smile, “but I literally don't do anything else in my free time. My free time is music.” His past as a skateboarder, tearing up the mean city streets and gliding down subway stairs? “I quit because I broke my arm too many times,” he explains. “I need to be able to play guitar.”
His singular focus indicates an attitude echoed by many of the greats in sports, acting, and music. To hone your craft fast—because The Industry waits for no one—you have to give it everything you’ve got. sombr’s ready to do that. He’s been doing that. A debut album is surely on the horizon. Meanwhile, touring with Barrett will open many more ears to the melancholic magic of his sound. It doesn’t take much to fall under sombr’s spell; listen to a few seconds of a song on TikTok, say, and you too will be bewitched.
Sombr wears Versace
