Again in August, the 20-year-old Shane Boose of Sombr threw his file launch social gathering on the patio of the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. Sombr’s debut album, “I Barely Know Her,” wouldn’t be out for a couple of days but, however beneath the patio’s twinkling fairy lights, he was already sweating the numbers a bit.
“Please go stream the album,” the lanky, severely-cheekboned Boose requested to a packed crowd of lissome, 20-something influencers and besuited trade varieties. “I actually need to pay again this advance.”
He shouldn’t have careworn. After Boose cruised via “12 to 12,” Sombr’s urbane, disco-funky single, Boose leaped into the resort’s turquoise pool. Quickly his backing band joined him, soaked after a sizzling night time of anticipation as the most popular new rock act within the nation.
As rowdy habits on the Chateau goes, it wasn’t fairly Billy Idol stripping nude and trashing his room for need of extra tequila. Nevertheless it did really feel like a callback to an incandescent period — a younger band having fun with its spoils at L.A.’s most notorious social gathering palace.
“I had simply landed from Japan the night time earlier than and I used to be exhausted,” Boose mentioned the following month, talking on Zoom from Nashville after rehearsals for his present tour. “The pool factor was fully unplanned. I didn’t know that my band was gonna observe me in. It was a kind of uncommon instances after I’m not so careworn about this profession. I simply felt like I used to be lastly having fun with it and simply dwelling.”
Sombr is a uncommon rock mission in 2025: indebted to high-panache indie with an arch wit and actual feeling, however operating up the Sizzling 100 like a TikTok breakout. With a quickly-scaled-up three-night-stand in L.A. in two weeks previewing a serious Coachella date subsequent 12 months, the pleasures of being — and the expectations on — Sombr are already formidable.
“Yeah, it’s scary,” Boose mentioned. “I believed there was no risk that I may ever have successful music. I used to be making various rock impressed by people who I’m impressed by, after which it grew to become what it’s. I attempt to keep offline and simply keep within the music. The very last thing I would like is for individuals’s opinions, or me being within the public eye, to have an effect on the artwork I’m creating.”
“I truly suppose I carry out higher the larger the group,” Boose mentioned. “It’s bizarre that I’m much less afraid the extra individuals there are.”
(Evelyn Freja/For The Instances)
When Boose calls in to speak post-rehearsal, he’s nonetheless wrapping his head across the scale of the tour forward of him, which is able to embrace two nights (Oct.28-29) on the 5,000-capacity Shrine Expo Corridor with a bonus night time in early November on the Fonda Theatre for good measure — arena-caliber numbers. On-line and onstage, he’s bitingly humorous, roasting the matcha-sipping, Clairo-stanning performative-male stereotypes of his technology of softbois, whereas additionally dancing with a low-buttoned, Bowie-worthy swish on the MTV Video Music Awards.
“I truly suppose I carry out higher the larger the group,” he mentioned. “There’s at all times one thing awkward concerning the 300- to 500-capacity venues as a result of you may see everybody’s facial features. That makes it much more nerve-racking. It’s bizarre that I’m much less afraid the extra individuals there are.”
By that measure, Sombr was virtually born to be the Gen Z rock breakout in 2025. Boose, a local of New York Metropolis’s Decrease East Facet, was raised by occasion planner and PR trade mother and father who labored with Elton John’s AIDS Basis and the nonprofit amfAR. He attended LaGuardia Excessive College, dwelling of alums like Timothée Chalamet and Nicki Minaj, however dropped out and moved to L.A. as soon as Sombr took off in his teenagers with the spare and craving single “Caroline.”
With a metropolis child’s gimlet-eyed savvy (and, it have to be mentioned, genetic-Powerball-winner attractiveness), Boose was doubtless sure for stardom at one factor or one other. However on his information, even his self-produced early ones, there’s a literary poise and dreamy loucheness that calls again to the imperious, wounded singers of his outdated neighborhood — the Strokes and Jeff Buckley specifically.
“I simply noticed that documentary ‘It’s By no means Over, Jeff Buckley,’ and I used to be bawling,” Boose mentioned. “‘Grace’ is my favourite file, however I anticipated him to be taking part in to manner larger crowds. It looks as if he’s gotten larger since he died. I’ve by no means cried from a film in my life, however that one had me in tears.”
Sombr’s ageless songs equally may have taken off in any period; they only occurred to reach in a single the place hundreds of thousands of younger individuals may watch him on TikTok at 18, wistfully staring down the digital camera from the again of a convertible within the amber L.A. magic hour on “Weak.”
That blend of sultry pop charisma and sturdier, affecting songwriting is what drew Warner Information to signal him in 2023. Was this mission bleary, distortion-fried indie-rock with a sure moon-eyed Babygirl enchantment? Is Boose a nascent pop star who’d actually moderately be honing his pedalboard?
“I feel there’s a craving for music with actual devices from actual studios, with an intro, verse, refrain, prechorus and an actual bridge. All these parts that the classics have that aren’t actually current as we speak in most pop,” Boose mentioned.
(Evelyn Freja/For The Instances)
“Shane has as a lot expertise as I’ve ever seen in an artist, however I don’t actually take into consideration the place he stands in relation to anybody else,” mentioned Chris Morris, a senior vice chairman of A&R at Warner Information. “He clearly reveres his influences, however what he’s creating is totally his personal — distinctive to his course of and perspective. I can solely hope his music has the power to influence his listeners the best way that ‘Grace’ or ‘Is This It’ did for his or her generations.”
Underneath Warner, he paired with producer Tony Berg (of Phoebe Bridgers and Boygenius fame) to search out his footing musically in a famously tempting city for a younger man on the rise.
“I moved out to L.A. proper after I turned 18 after I received signed. I used to be purported to be doing music, however I used to be going out with my buddies, like, 5 nights per week,” Boose mentioned. “I used to be like, ‘Rattling, I’m changing into a f— loser. One thing simply clicked in me at one level, and I received it collectively and stopped going out whereas all my buddies nonetheless have been. My solely focus was on music on a regular basis.”
That head-down work ethic paid off on singles like “Again to Pals” and “Undressed,” which landed in winter and spring with a preternatural talent for hooks and emotional heft. “Again to Pals” — a mid-tempo piano brooder, concerning the liminal post-hookup state between platonic and never — is viciously hummable, punctured with dramatic falsettos. “Undressed” is tender and pained in its refrain — “I don’t need to get undressed for a brand new particular person over again,” he sings, earlier than the shockingly mature and mournful confession on the bridge — “I don’t need the kids of one other man / To have the eyes of a lady I received’t neglect.”
“I feel there’s a craving for music with actual devices from actual studios, with an intro, verse, refrain, prechorus and an actual bridge. All these parts that the classics have that aren’t actually current as we speak in most pop,” Boose mentioned.
Touchdown two in a row helped him lose the jitters that he merely received fortunate as soon as. “I used to be like, OK, that’s two hits within the span of some months; I’m good for a bit,” he mentioned, laughing. “Positively skipped the one-hit surprise factor fairly fast, which was a giant worry of mine.”
“Shane has as a lot expertise as I’ve ever seen in an artist, however I don’t actually take into consideration the place he stands in relation to anybody else,” mentioned Chris Morris, a senior vice chairman of A&R at Warner Information. “He clearly reveres his influences, however what he’s creating is totally his personal. I can solely hope his music has the power to influence his listeners the best way that ‘Grace’ or ‘Is This It’ did for his or her generations.”
(Evelyn Freja/For The Instances)
Nationwide fame got here rapidly thereafter. “His TV debut on Jimmy Fallon was actually particular. Performing reside in entrance of a nationwide TV viewers for the primary time just isn’t simple, however he crushed it,” mentioned Sean Stevens, one other senior vice chairman of A&R at Warner. “We have been all standing off to the facet, his household, his crew and some of us from the label, and it was like watching him change into a celebrity in actual time. We have been elated. He was elated. And we knew he was prepared.”
“Again to Pals” certainly hit No. 22, whereas “Undressed” peaked at 16. On the energy of these two singles, “I Barely Know Her” was good for a No. 10 debut on the album charts. For a technology slandered as sexless and terminally stilted, Sombr has carried out a tough trick — imbued indie rock with a generationally recent, fully-articulated sense of younger male want and ran it up the pop charts.
Deeper album cuts like “We By no means Dated” can name again to Bonnie Raitt (“I can’t make you like me / No, I can’t make you like me”), or fire up some Frank O’Hara vibes on “Canal Avenue” (“This time final 12 months I used to be placing up a tree in your house … I’m nonetheless smoking cigarettes on my sofa / And it kills my mother, nevertheless it brings me again to you.”) Even on “12 to 12,” simply essentially the most overtly pop single in his catalog, there’s a hand-crafted sizzle atop its four-on-the-floor thump, one which harkens again to Daft Punk’s “Random Entry Recollections” or Bowie and Nile Rodgers’ “Let’s Dance.” Addison Rae — the Most important Pop Woman success story of the 12 months thus far — dropped in for a bedroom-eyed star flip dancing in its music video. However the music already feels destined for wedding ceremony dance flooring many years from now.
“I really like Addison, man. She’s superb,” Boose mentioned. “Working together with her made me understand how grateful I’m to have the ability to name up insanely proficient individuals and create artwork that may reside ceaselessly with them over, like, a weekend.”
The 2 will cross paths at Coachella subsequent 12 months, when each younger stars are booked second-line on Saturday. “I haven’t been to Coachella, nevertheless it’s on my Mt. Rushmore. Really the one music competition I’ve ever been to is the one I simply performed in Japan,” Boose mentioned. What a visit to be a 20-year-old New York rocker seeing your title on equal Coachella footing with the Strokes, Interpol and David Byrne.
However precise fame for Sombr — the invasive, always-on-edge, you’re-being-watched form — is the one factor Boose hasn’t gotten used to. Out in L.A., he’s laborious to overlook — even when he wasn’t a rock star, you’d assume he was one if you happen to handed him on the Erewhon smoothie bar. Whereas he’s cuttingly humorous about his personal persona on his social media, he admits the tradition of contemporary fame is nerve-racking and may poison the effectively for each songwriting and being your finest self.
“I wasn’t ready,” Boose mentioned. “Being a public determine, whereas I like it and I’m so grateful, I’d say my weakest and most susceptible factors, and after I’m the worst particular person is all associated to that.
(Evelyn Freja/For The Instances)
“I haven’t adjusted,” Boose admitted. “I wasn’t ready. Being a public determine, whereas I like it and I’m so grateful, I’d say my weakest and most susceptible factors, and after I’m the worst particular person is all associated to that. I’m tremendous fortunate, however all of the worst factors of my life over the previous six to eight months have been as a result of it’s f— laborious being put beneath a microscope. Nevertheless it’s just like the one damaging in a world of so many positives. So I’m coping with it.”
“This factor impacts individuals otherwise and it may well change hour by hour,” Stevens mentioned. “You by no means know what it’s going to imply for somebody till it begins to occur. What I do know is Shane is sensible past his years and has a tremendous help system to assist carry him via all of it. He has an unimaginable household, a loyal crew and a label that cares as deeply about his well-being because it does his profession.”
Boose is coping with it by throwing himself again into writing for Album 2. As an alternative of going out, he’s armed the tour bus with a recording studio to doc this new section of life amidst the trials of quick stardom. When he performs these teenage singles like “Caroline,” he does so now from a fond distance, one which he can’t fairly relate to even only a few years later.
“There’s songs that I simply f— hate, not as a result of I used to be attempting to place out lazy work, however as a result of I used to be 16,” Boose mentioned. “The music that I’m making now has that feeling instances 10.”
“I can’t put a pin on why it’s occurring,” he added, wryly acknowledging that his view, for now, is wanting up from the pool on the Chateau. “One thing about all my desires coming true, you recognize, it’s working for me.”
