You’d be hard-pressed to find a debut album that made more of a splash in 2025 than sombr’s breakthrough effort I Barely Know Her—the catalyst for the NYC-born, LA-based singer-songwriter’s snowballing success. His rise from promising unknown to headlining arenas and performing on SNL—compressed into the period between the December 2024 release of heartbroken lead single “back to friends” and the international chart success of I Barely Know Her eight months later—reflects both the critical and commercial acclaim garnered by his signature brand of lightly distorted vocals, wrought vulnerability, and ornately produced guitar pop. “Every song you make should be just outside of your comfort zone, whether it’s emotionally or the production,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I think that’s how you know you’ve done something right. Every song I make, I wanted to be my favorite song I’ve made.” That ambition can be heard in the charged intensity of soaring pop anthems such as “12 to 12” and “come closer,” as well as “canal street,” a melancholic meander through haunting memories that sombr described as “the most vulnerable song on the record and probably the one that means the most.” He credits his partnership with producer and industry veteran Tony Berg—who has also been instrumental in guiding the musical direction of alt-pop artists including Phoebe Bridgers and MUNA’s Katie Gavin—for helping him graduate from his bedroom to the studio. “We just have the best friendship,” he says. “That guy is my mentor. I mean, my first few months in the studio with him, we couldn’t even spend half the session making music. He was just trying to teach me about life and about different books and different movies and just making me a smarter, less shitty person.” In that respect, I Barely Know Her serves as a container for sombr’s newfound knowledge and experience, both as an artist and as a human being exploring the raw outer edges of lost love. The title succinctly sums up what the record expounds upon in depth. “It’s about knowing someone for so long and having such a deep connection and then something happening and then realizing or thinking, ‘Did I even know her?’” he says. “But it’s also a joke. I barely even know her and I’ve wrote a whole album about it.”