walking upstream…
sombr
Shane Michael Boose grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the son of a father who had played in a New York performance-art rock band and who kept the record player going through his childhood — the Beach Boys among the bands Boose credits with soundtracking it; he enrolled as a vocal major at LaGuardia High School before dropping out in his junior year to pursue the songs he had been self-releasing under the all-lowercase name sombr since 2021. He broke through in early 2025 when the moody, cinematic singles 'back to friends' and 'undressed' went viral on TikTok, feeding into his 2025 debut album 'I Barely Know Her.' Critics have filed his reverb-soaked, heart-on-sleeve balladry under a wry, self-aware strain of 2020s alternative pop, sung in an aching tenor.
the sound in question
2024
back to friendssombr
walk the tributaries ↓
Radiohead1990s · Art rock / Alternative rock
sombr repeatedly names Radiohead among his biggest influences and cites the band as a core songwriting touchstone. The mark is less in sound-alike production than in a mood — a slow, aching, guitar-and-voice melancholy and a sense of alienated longing draped over simple, unresolved chord changes.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Hollywood Reporter ↗
1995
Fake Plastic TreesRadiohead
2024
back to friendssombr
listen forCue Radiohead's 'Fake Plastic Trees' and sit with the way a quiet, weary verse builds toward a single devastated vocal swell, then play sombr's 'back to friends' — the same move, a hushed confession that lifts into one big cathartic ache before folding back down.
Bon Iver2010s · Indie folk / Experimental / Folktronica
sombr has grouped Bon Iver alongside Radiohead and Jeff Buckley as one of his biggest influences. You can hear it in his fondness for intimate, close-miked confession and for layered, wordless falsetto used as atmosphere rather than as straightforward melody.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Hollywood Reporter ↗
2008
Skinny LoveBon Iver
2025
we never datedsombr
listen forThrow on Bon Iver's 'Skinny Love' for that raw, quavering falsetto pushed right up against the microphone, then hear sombr's 'we never dated' lean on the same hushed, breaking upper register to make the heartbreak feel overheard rather than performed.
Jeff Buckley1990s · Alternative rock / Folk rock / Blues
sombr names Buckley among his biggest influences, alongside Radiohead and Bon Iver. The debt surfaces in his taste for a naked, vibrato-heavy tenor that leaps up into fragile falsetto at a song's emotional peak.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Hollywood Reporter ↗
1994
Last GoodbyeJeff Buckley
2025
undressedsombr
listen forPut on Buckley's 'Last Goodbye' and wait for the way his voice cracks upward and floats into falsetto over the swelling guitars, then hear sombr do the same on 'undressed' — the vocal thins to a trembling head-voice right as the arrangement blooms behind it.