Isabel Sofia LaRosa (born September 18, 2004, in Annapolis, Maryland) is a Cuban-American dark-pop singer, songwriter and director signed to Slumbo Labs/RCA Records since she was 17. Her viral single “i’m yours” (2022) is RIAA Platinum, “Favorite” drew 400 million+ views of fan content before it was even released, her catalog has passed 3.5 billion global streams (plus 5 billion short-form video streams), and her debut album Raven (2025) launched a headline world tour. She writes the treatment and directs every one of her own music videos.
Born to a Cuban mother and an American father, she grew up in Annapolis before moving to Los Angeles as the career scaled. Her father, a hobbyist jazz saxophonist who “always kind of wanted jazz musician kids,” took her to jazz clubs and open mics from early childhood; by seven she was singing standards while her brother Thomas LaRosa, four years older, backed her on guitar. Thomas started writing songs at 11 and Isabel followed, the two writing together since she was in elementary school. He has remained her sole producer and primary co-writer across her entire career, and until 2025 the only collaborator, period: “the only person I’ve worked with my entire life and the only person I’ve written with.” “He’s honestly such a massive part of the creative process, I would not be here without him... I always say he’s the other half of my brain.” Homeschooled (audiobooks about crows and ravens included, the seed of a future album title), she was still finishing high school online when she signed her record deal. She is one of four kids; the second verse of “Home” is written for her younger sister, an athlete who turned 16 in 2025: “we were both trying not to cry during the session.”
Around age 10, discovering Melanie Martinez flipped the switch: “this is what I want to do.” The broader influence map she cites runs from Lady Gaga, The Neighbourhood, Twenty One Pilots and Lana Del Rey to her mother’s classic-rock diet of the Bee Gees, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Deftones and Portishead. She self-released “16 Candles” (September 8, 2021), then “Closer” and “Gameboy,” and signed with Slumbo Labs/RCA in February 2022, at 17; “Therapy” (January 26, 2022) was the first release of the label era, and her early UK releases went out via Ministry of Sound.
Her debut EP I’m Watching You (June 24, 2022) arrived as a three-part, self-co-directed video trilogy forming a short film: “HAUNTED” (February), “HELP” (April 15) and “HEAVEN.” “HAUNTED,” reportedly sparked by a viral remix trend, was the first traction (“I’ve never had anything go remotely viral before... it was truly an insane feeling”). The one-off “Heartbeat” (August 26, 2022) sketched the thematic template: “two people who have a secret, mutual obsession with each other.” Then “i’m yours” (October 28, 2022, with a sped-up version and a self-directed video two weeks later) went TikTok-nuclear, RIAA Platinum, BPI Silver, RMNZ Gold, and a slot opening 20 shows on Nessa Barrett’s Young Forever Tour (including NYC’s Terminal 5) showed her what it meant: hearing crowds sing it back was “where things clicked into place.” The 2023 EP You Fear the God That Loves You (March 24) took its title from a Miami writing trip where she and Thomas went searching through Bible quotes; “Older” (September 13, 2023) added another RMNZ Gold. She is frank about the platform that built all of it (“I wouldn’t have my career without TikTok”), playful about its theater (she once jokingly claimed “Evil” was written for Wednesday: “I love lying on TikTok”), and candid about the whiplash. On the billion-stream milestone: “I don’t think I’ve fully processed what that means.” On virality generally: “every time I see something do well I’m like, ‘who’s lying to me?’”
Raven (April 18, 2025), announced on Valentine’s Day alongside the single “Home,” took its name from folklore: “A psychopomp is a guide into the afterlife... ravens, they’re also associated with change and rebirth,” with a playful nod to her hometown Baltimore Ravens. It chronicles “change, rebirth, and all the rites of passage... growing up, shedding your childhood, having your heart broken, and coming out on the other side a new person,” written “half from heartbreak and half from anger.” It was also her first time letting outsiders in: Amy Allen wrote on “Piece of My Life” and “Good for You,” Ian Kirkpatrick co-wrote and co-produced “Home,” Delacey wrote on “Cry for You” and “Destroy Myself for You,” Noonie Bao and Linus Wiklund on “Hope It Hurts,” Elena Rose on “Favorite,” with OJIVOLTA, The Monsters & Strangerz and Lucas Sim joining Thomas on production; “Girl of Your Dreams” even builds on a “You Don’t Own Me” interpolation. “Favorite” carries a Spanish verse honoring her Cuban heritage (“I grew up surrounded by Cuban music, especially salsa”); “Muse” is about an artist she dated, never named in press. The 14-track sequencing was deliberate: “I love things with a narrative... I wanted the order to be really specific.” The method was not: “We tried to not be paralyzed by decision fatigue. We just wrote stuff and followed what we thought was cool, what landed.” Her personal favorite is the closer “Burning”: “It talks about things I’ve wanted to say for a long time but just couldn’t talk about.” The writing itself is compulsive: “I feel anxious if I don’t write... I almost don’t allow myself to get there.” The album later went Gold in Brazil. The 2026 follow-up era began with “Hallucination” (May 2026, stripped-back, born of vivid nightmares and “the process of moving on from someone”) and the EP Promising Young Woman, which she calls “music I’ve never really done before.”
“I direct all my videos and write them,” she says; in high school she seriously weighed film school instead of music, and calls directing “always a dream of mine... I’m sort of a control freak.” Treatments start in her notes app, listening on repeat and writing down what she visualizes; the cited influences are Euphoria, early Stranger Things, Get Out, True Detective and Ozark. The auteur control extends to styling: no stylist, self-sourced lace and leather from Etsy, Depop and LA’s Trashy Lingerie, Debbie Harry as the icon, safety-pin repairs on the road, and a pre-stage ritual involving Danessa Myricks “Fireball” glitter. The look has evolved with the eras, from an all-leather, Katniss-esque bodysuit to custom silk bloomers and lingerie-inspired stagewear, a blend she sums up as “girly, but in an alternative way.” Named a Spotify “Pop Rising” artist to watch (2024), a PEOPLE Emerging Artist and an InStyle Best New Musician (2025), she keeps fan intimacy analog too, handing out USB drives with possible unreleased music at meet-and-greets: “I talk to them every day. They’re like my friends.”
Her career and Ari Abdul’s are structurally intertwined: Isabel co-wrote Abdul’s Gold-certified “Babydoll,” “Stay” and “Taste” (all with Thomas producing), with credits carrying over to the sped-up versions that did the viral work; the two co-headlined the 2024 God’s Watching Tour, performing “Babydoll” together nightly in cities from San Francisco to Dallas to Chicago (Isabel has even played it solo at LA’s El Rey Theatre); and Abdul co-wrote Isabel’s 2025 single “My Girl.” Same label, same producer, shared writing credits, shared touring history: the tightest artist pair in dark pop, all tracing back to Thomas asking his business-student best friend to try recording a song at his studio internship in 2021.
2025 was the proof-of-scale year: the headline Psychopomp Tour opened across North America with the album (San Diego through Los Angeles), then Europe and the UK in November-December via Live Nation, Bristol, London, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham plus Madrid, Zurich, Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Cologne, Warsaw, Milan, Berlin, Prague, Munich and Paris; she called Psychopomp her favorite tour so far. The same year brought a Governors Ball main-stage set (June 6), full circle from 2021, when she and Thomas were kicked out of the same festival’s backstage area before she was famous; Lollapalooza Chicago (August 1), a Grant Park return: she had played the festival’s BMI stage in August 2023 with Thomas beside her onstage, on the same weekend’s bill as Christian Gates, and closed that first trip with a Lollapalooza aftershow supporting The Rose at the Vic Theatre; Lollapalooza India in March; and European festivals from Sziget to Summer Well, FM4 Frequency and Pukkelpop. Her stated goal for the shows: “I want it to feel like you’re being brought into a different world for an hour and a half.” Before all that came the 2024 Heaven Doesn’t Wait Tour (extended to Australia in February 2025) and an MTV VMAs performance: “The VMAs were surreal... I didn’t even have a stylist!” In 2026 she plays her first true arenas supporting Madison Beer’s Locket Tour (European/UK leg, May 11-31, alongside Lulu Simon): “I’ve never actually done my own full arena show. I honestly can’t wait”, plus runs with Melanie Martinez (the Hades: The Sacrifice Tour, from her age-10 spark to her tourmate) and Artemas’s Lovercore tour.
Label: Slumbo Labs/RCA Records since February 2022, signed while still a minor; early UK distribution ran through Ministry of Sound. Booking: Wasserman Music, worldwide, with agents Marty Diamond, Eli Gelernter, Christopher Smyth and Nick Matthews. No personal manager or management firm appears in any public source, and no brand-endorsement deals are on record: the business footprint is music, touring and direct-to-fan merch, with the creative operation (writing, production with Thomas, video direction, styling) kept almost entirely in-house. For an artist with 3.5 billion streams, it is an unusually small org chart.
The numbers compound fast: over 1 billion total streams by late 2024, 2 billion by mid-2025, 3.5 billion by 2026, with 11.6 million Spotify monthly listeners around Raven’s release and roughly 5 billion short-form video streams on top. “Favorite” is the signature case study: 400 million+ views of fan-made content before the song officially existed. Certifications now span the US, UK, New Zealand, Poland, Hungary, France and Brazil. Press has tracked the arc from TikTok phenomenon to auteur: PEOPLE named her a 2025 Emerging Artist, InStyle a Best New Musician, and interviewers keep returning to the same tension she names herself, between compulsive output and the anxiety underneath: “It can be very anxiety-inducing... every time something good happens, I think, where’s the bad?” The grounded version, from the Tennessean, days after the album dropped: “It’s terrifying... but it’s fun. I’m able to pay rent, so something must be going right.”
| Year | Record |
|---|---|
| 2022 | “i’m yours” goes viral on TikTok; eventually RIAA Platinum, BPI Silver (UK), RMNZ Gold (New Zealand) |
| 2023 | “Older” certified RMNZ Gold; international Golds/Platinums accumulate across Poland, Hungary and France for “i’m yours,” “Eyes Don’t Lie,” “Favorite” and “Older” |
| 2024 | “Favorite” draws 400M+ fan-content views before release; catalog passes 1 billion streams; Spotify “Pop Rising” artist to watch |
| 2025 | Catalog passes 2 billion streams; 11.6M Spotify monthly listeners at Raven’s release; Raven certified Gold in Brazil |
| 2026 | 3.5 billion global streams, plus 5 billion short-form video streams and 300M video views cited in press materials |
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2004 | Born September 18 in Annapolis, Maryland, to a Cuban mother and American father |
| 2011 | Around seven, singing jazz standards at open mics with her father on sax and Thomas on guitar |
| 2014 | Around 10, discovers Melanie Martinez: “this is what I want to do” |
| 2021 | Self-releases “16 Candles” (September 8), “Closer,” “Gameboy”; gets kicked out of the Governors Ball backstage with Thomas; co-writes “Babydoll” with Thomas and Ari Abdul |
| 2022 | Signs Slumbo Labs/RCA at 17 (February); I’m Watching You EP and video trilogy (June 24); “i’m yours” (October 28) goes viral, later RIAA Platinum |
| 2023 | Opens 20 shows on Nessa Barrett’s Young Forever Tour; You Fear the God That Loves You EP (March 24); “Older” |
| 2024 | “Favorite” (March 29); MTV VMAs debut; God’s Watching co-headline with Ari Abdul; Heaven Doesn’t Wait Tour; 1 billion streams |
| 2025 | Raven (April 18) launches the Psychopomp Tour, North America then Europe/UK; Governors Ball main stage (June 6), full circle; Lollapalooza Chicago and India; “My Girl” with Ari Abdul |
| 2026 | “Hallucination”; Promising Young Woman EP; first arenas with Madison Beer’s Locket Tour; support runs with Melanie Martinez and Artemas; 3.5 billion streams |
Isabel LaRosa, full name Isabel Sofia LaRosa. “Isabella Rosa” is a common misrendering; she performs and releases as Isabel LaRosa on every platform, and posts as @isabel.s.larosa.
Born September 18, 2004: 21 as of mid-2026. She signed her record deal at 17 while finishing high school online.
Her brother Thomas LaRosa, four years older, has produced essentially everything and co-writes everything; Raven added outside names (OJIVOLTA, The Monsters & Strangerz, Lucas Sim, Ian Kirkpatrick) for the first time, always alongside Thomas.
No, they are close friends and labelmates. Isabel co-wrote Abdul’s “Babydoll,” “Stay” and “Taste,” Thomas produced them, the two co-headlined the 2024 God’s Watching Tour, and Abdul co-wrote Isabel’s “My Girl.”
Yes, all of them: she writes the treatments (drafted in her notes app while looping the song) and directs, a practice running from the 2022 I’m Watching You trilogy through the Raven era. She also styles herself, with no stylist even at the VMAs.
In folklore a psychopomp guides souls into the afterlife, and ravens carry associations of change, death and rebirth, her frame for an album about shedding childhood. The name also winks at the Baltimore Ravens, her home-state team.
An artist she dated who inspired several songs; she has deliberately never named him in press, and no source confirms an identity.
| Year | Title | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Promising Young Woman · Hallucination | EP · Single | New era |
| 2025 | Raven (14 tracks: Famous · Good Girl · Pretty Boy · Girl of Your Dreams · Cry for You · Home · Hope It Hurts · See You Again · Good for You · Favorite · Muse · Destroy Myself for You · Piece of My Life · Burning) · My Girl · Her Face | Debut album · Singles | Gold in Brazil; writers incl. Amy Allen, Kirkpatrick, Delacey |
| 2024 | Favorite · Pretty Boy · Muse | Singles | Favorite: 400M+ pre-release views |
| 2023 | You Fear the God That Loves You · Older (RMNZ Gold) · Eyes Don’t Lie | EP · Singles | |
| 2021-22 | 16 Candles · Closer · Gameboy · Therapy · I’m Watching You (HAUNTED · HELP · HEAVEN) · Heartbeat · i’m yours (RIAA Platinum) | Singles · EP | RCA signing Feb 2022 |
On this site: Ari Abdul, the other half of the Slumbo universe · Ella Boh, who now produces Abdul’s records from the same orbit · Nessa Barrett, whose Young Forever Tour gave her the first big rooms · Artemas, her 2026 Lovercore tourmate · The Neighbourhood, one of the influences she names · and Dutch Melrose, the scene’s other artist who directs his own videos.