The lights never dim on Sombr’s 12 to 12. Released on 24 July 2025, the single slips into indie-disco attire and fixates on romantic possession, not in the grand, sweeping sense, but hour by hour, from midnight to midnight. It’s not a love song. It’s a fixation soundtrack.
From the first line, Sombr doesn’t ask to be loved back. He simply declares he won’t want anyone else.
Not during the daylight, not after. The obsession is time-stamped. In a track co-produced with Tony Berg and written by Sombr himself (real name Shane Boose), the language is plainspoken and pointed: “In a room full of people, I look for you.”
If the beat invites you in, the words quietly close the door behind you.
This isn’t a breakup song. It’s the fallout after pretending the story was already over.
12 to 12 takes place in what feels like a fever dream disguised as a disco.
The video directed by Gus Black makes that literal. Sombr plays both late-night TV host and guest, caught in a studio frozen in gold light.
The set never changes, the questions never get asked. He’s stuck in his own loop, trying to explain something without actually saying it.
One fan described it as “watching someone interview themselves, but not admitting what they really want to say.”
Addison Rae floats through the scene as more than a dancer.
Rae doesn’t play a straightforward love interest. She mouths his words, dances alongside him, and they make eye contact.
But it never quite lands as a romantic exchange. There’s a formality to how she moves. She stays close, she follows the choreography, but the intimacy feels distant.
At times, it seems like she’s mirroring him rather than connecting with him, reflecting a version of closeness that might only exist from his side.
Her presence adds glamour, but also blurs the emotional centre. She’s there. But whether she’s real to him, or just an imagined version, is left open.
When he sings “from 12 to 12,” the clock in the background doesn’t move. The party doesn’t change.
The lyric becomes less about a day and more about how long someone can pretend that longing is enough.
The production leans into this quiet panic: marimba flickers, a tight beat masked in sparkle, and a melody that refuses to resolve. It’s dancefloor melancholy disguised in sheen.
Fans on Reddit picked up the shift in tone compared to earlier tracks like Undressed and Back to Friends.
While those leaned into vulnerability, 12 to 12 sounds less confessional and more observational.
You might also like:
- Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather Lyrics Explained: A Love So Strong It Almost Hurts
- Drake & Central Cee’s Which One Lyrics Explained: UK Swagger, Subliminal Shots, and Summer Flexing
- KPop Demon Hunters Golden Lyrics Meaning: A K-Pop Anthem With Theatrical Bite
- Ethel Cain’s Fuck Me Eyes: A Shimmering Character Study of Longing, Scorn and Small-Town Myth
One listener called it “The 1975 if they stopped apologising.” Others praised its restraint, noting it “feels like it’s just holding something back the whole time, and that’s what makes it hurt more.”
There’s a flicker of backstory midway through: “We met in a Paris café / I said, ‘Can I sit with you?’” He doesn’t tell you what happened next.
The moment hangs unanswered, like the rest of the song, suggesting the connection might’ve only existed in his head.
For an artist only 20, Sombr’s command of tone is striking. That shouldn’t be surprising, his last single Back to Friends was named one of Rolling Stone’s Best Songs of 2024 and topped Spotify’s Global Weekly Chart while leading U.S. Alternative Radio for five weeks.
Undressed followed with over 500 million streams and a performance slot on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
In a recent studio session at Sound City with producer Tony Berg, Shane Boose pulled back the curtain on how “12 to 12” came together. And it wasn’t the carefully crafted heartbreak anthem you might expect.
“I kind of started this as a joke,” Shane admitted. “It was never in the cards for me to make anything even close to a disco song or vibe.”
The track began on a night when nothing else was working. He threw on a four-on-the-floor disco groove, then made a deliberate choice that shaped the entire sound: “Let me find the cheapest, shittiest piano sound I can find.”
He pulled it from his Korg Triton, a synth he keeps around specifically for that lo-fi, time-machine feel.
Then the melody hit, and suddenly the joke turned serious. “That’s when it hit me. I was like, okay, this is really sick.”
But here’s where the lyrics get interesting. Shane describes himself as “such a cocky [ __ ],” and those personality traits bled straight into the verses in ways that surprised even him.
“That you can hear me in that verse, and that never would have come out of me if I didn’t have that success and confidence,” he explained. The vulnerability in “12 to 12” only exists because of the bravado underneath it.
Tony Berg, who co-produced the track, sees something most listeners might miss. “Dance music is monosyllabic lyrically,” he said. “It’s often dumb music. But Shane reveals a lot about himself in the course of this song.”
The lyrics themselves came together through Shane’s typical process: freestyling, mumbling placeholder sounds, then turning them into actual words.
“I was kind of freestyling, mumbling stuff, and then I turned them into words and it was this, and I kind of didn’t look back.”
That Paris café line? Not some carefully researched romantic detail. Just whatever fell out in the moment.
Berg pushed him hard on structure. “I would bring something and he would be like, ‘Go back and write a bridge,'” Shane recalled. “Or he would be like, ‘This bridge sucks.'” What started as homework turned into Shane wanting to impress his producer, bringing in bridges that would make Berg go, “Whoa, that’s not the same that was here a month ago.”
The final mix came courtesy of Shawn Everett, who made the track loud enough to “jump out of the speaker” without crushing the nuance.
They kept Shane’s original $800 mic vocal. They kept the cheap Triton piano. The lo-fi aesthetic wasn’t an accident, it was the point.
“We make a combination of my awful sounds, my kind of DIY lo-fi sounds,” Shane said. The nostalgia he’s chasing isn’t about recreating the past. It’s about how certain textures pull you back there whether you want to go or not.
So when Shane sings “I know you wanna see me in hell, my love,” he’s not just performing heartbreak. He’s letting his cocky side admit defeat.
And when the cheap piano loops under those words, it’s not trying to sound expensive. It’s trying to sound like memory – grainy, imperfect, stuck on repeat from 12 to 12.
But 12 to 12 feels like something else entirely. It doesn’t try to make you feel.
It simply shows you what it feels like to keep wanting something that never gave a clear answer.
The final chorus shifts the line: “Would you avoid me or would you see me through?”
He’s not asking if they still care. He’s asking if they ever actually saw him.
12 to 12 doesn’t dwell on a breakup. It stays in that uneasy space where love might’ve only gone one way.
And the visuals double down on that idea – bright, choreographed, and utterly empty of resolution.
So here’s the question it leaves behind: if you spend every hour looking for someone, and they never look back, is that love or just a beautifully soundtracked ghost story?
Full Lyrics to 12 to 12 by Sombr
Verse 1
I don’t want anyone else
From the hours of 12 to 12
I am not the least compelled
By anyone but yourself
Look at me, it makes me melt
I know you wanna see me in hell, my love
I’m dealing with the cards I’ve dealt
While you’re dancing with somebody else
Pre-Chorus
Was it always in your plan to leave eventually?
Because to me, there’s no one else that could make sense to me
The last and final puzzle piece
Chorus
In a room full of people, I look for you
Would you avoid me or would you look for me too?
Tell me, is our story through? (Through)
Or do our hearts still beat in tune?
Verse 2
I’ve never felt anything
Like the love from my final days
Why’d you wait
To show me you could do it this way?
Woah, I’ll never look at you, look at you the same
We met in a Paris café
I said, “Can I sit with you? Comment ça se fait?”
My mistake
If I’d known that it would happen this way
I’d never looked at you, looked in the first place
Pre-Chorus
Was it always in your plan to leave eventually?
Because to me, there’s no one else that could make sense to me
The last and final puzzle piece
Chorus
In a room full of people, I look for you
Would you avoid me or would you look for me too?
Tell me, is our story through? (Through)
Or do our hearts still beat in tune?
Bridge
Maybe, I’m delusional
And the way you act is usual
Maybe in another world
I won’t feel so unlovable (Unlovable)
Oh (Unlovable)
Chorus
In a room full of people, I look for you
Would you avoid me or would you look for me too?
Tell me, is our story through? (Through)
Or do our hearts still beat in tune?
In a room full of people, I look for you
Would you avoid me or would you see me through?
Tell me, is our story through? (Through)
Or do our hearts still beat in tune?