Sombr has built a career on melancholy, so it tracks that the 20-year-old wants to be going through it physically while he writes it all down. During a recent appearance on Brittany Broski’s Royal Court, the singer born Shane Boose explained that he deliberately makes his recording sessions as uncomfortable as possible, starting with the thermostat.
“I purposely don’t turn on the AC so I can suffer and sweat,” he told Broski, treating the heat as a creative accelerant rather than an hindrance. The discomfort, he said, makes him hungrier to work and chase a better song. His benchmark is specific. He wants to be sweating like a jazz musician by the time a track is finished. “It makes me hungrier to work and make a good song. Like, I have to be sweating like a jazz musician when I make my music,” he explained.
The ritual does not stop at temperature. Sombr also prefers to work deep into the night, long after the rest of the world has gone quiet, and has said he would rather stay up until 6 a.m. than clock out early. Dark bedrooms and self-imposed suffering, as he framed it, are where the songs actually come from.
It is a fitting origin story for music drenched in heartache. Sombr broke out in 2025 with “Back to Friends” and “Undressed,” then turned his debut album I Barely Know Her into one of the year’s biggest pop-rock arrivals. The streak earned him a Best New Artist nomination at the 68th Grammy Awards on February 1st, where he performed “12 to 12” alongside the rest of the category’s nominees. Olivia Dean took the W.
He has kept the momentum going since, releasing “Homewrecker” on February 6th as his first new music after the album. Whether that one came together in a sweltering, blacked-out bedroom, he did not say. But based on his process, it is a safe bet the AC was off.
Sombr is currently on the road behind his debut album I Barely Know Her, with the “You Are the Reason Tour” winding through North American arenas this fall before wrapping with a hometown finale at Madison Square Garden on November 23rd. If you want to catch him sweating it out in person, head over to our guide on how to get tickets to Sombr’s 2026 tour.
