Sombr taught himself production on GarageBand before TikTok made him a star at 19
Shane Boose started layering harmonies in GarageBand at the end of elementary school. In March 2025, two of his songs, Back to Friends and Undressed, took off on TikTok and climbed into the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100, turning the New Yorker known as Sombr into a Grammy nominee.
A Manhattan native, Boose arrived on 5 July 2005 and spent his childhood on the Lower East Side. His father founded an event planning company and his mother works in PR at amfAR. He graduated from GarageBand to Logic Pro in middle school, picking up production from online tutorials, and by high school he preferred producing his own tracks to handing them to outside producers. The stage name folds in his initials, SMB, along with the mood he was in when he chose it.
His debut single, Nothing Left to Say, came out in October 2021. He was a vocal major at LaGuardia High School but left during his junior year after releasing Caroline in 2022. When that song went viral in early 2023, Warner Records signed him, and that September he put out his first EP, In Another Life, co-produced by Tony Berg.
The 2025 breakout moved fast. Undressed topped the Irish chart and reached the top five in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, while Back to Friends won Best Alternative Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, where he also performed on 7 September. Billboard named him to its 21 Under 21 list in May, the month of his live television debut on Jimmy Fallon's show. His debut album, I Barely Know Her, arrived on 22 August, won praise from Rolling Stone, NME and Variety, and climbed into the top ten of both the Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart. A Best New Artist nomination at the 68th Grammy Awards followed.
Critics file his music under indie rock, alternative pop and pop rock, and he sings as a tenor. He names Jeff Buckley, who shaped his vocals, and Radiohead as his biggest influences; his father used to play OK Computer around the house. His first single after the album, Homewrecker, came out on 6 February 2026 and peaked at number 16 on the Hot 100.
Source: Sombr
