Thomas LaRosa

Thomas LaRosa is a New York-born, Annapolis-raised producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has quietly built one of pop's more unusual sibling arrangements: he is the sole in-house producer and co-writer of every song his younger sister Isabel LaRosa has released, and separately the producer behind Ari Abdul's breakout, multi-country-certified hit "BABYDOLL." Rarely photographed or profiled on his own, LaRosa operates almost entirely inside other artists' spotlights, a role he has held since the two LaRosa siblings began writing songs together as children.

Early Life and the Sibling Partnership

Per Famous Birthdays, Thomas LaRosa was born April 21, 2001, listing New York as his birthplace, roughly three years before Isabel LaRosa, born September 18, 2004. The LaRosa siblings were raised primarily in Annapolis, Maryland, with the family also splitting time in the Brooklyn area, a pattern consistent with Isabel's own bio, which Karma! Magazine describes as "Maryland-born." The siblings share a Cuban-American mother and an American father described as a casual jazz musician; per 1883 Magazine, "growing up with a father who was a casual jazz musician, LaRosa and her brother, Thomas, her producer and co-writer, started performing at jazz jams, singing standards and playing guitar." Those jazz-jam evenings are cited as an early, formative influence on both children.

The working partnership between the two siblings did not begin in a studio or with any industry involvement; it began in childhood. In a June 2023 Music Connection feature on Isabel's signing story, Thomas stated directly: “Isabel and I have been working on music since she was 7, and I was 11. I don't think there's anybody that it feels more natural to work with than Isabel” (Music Connection, June 27, 2023). That places the origin of the LaRosa creative partnership around 2011 to 2012, roughly a decade before either sibling had any label, publishing or viral moment to their name.

The earliest publicly documented output of that partnership is "Scared," track two on the joint EP driving, credited to "Isabel LaRosa and Thomas LaRosa" and released September 13, 2019, with Thomas producing, per Genius. This predates Isabel's viral RCA-era breakout by roughly three years and confirms the siblings were self-releasing collaborative material as teenagers, entirely outside of any label system.

Slumbo Labs and the Break Into Production

Thomas's formal entry into professional production came through an internship at Slumbo Labs in New York after finishing high school. He was later promoted into an engineering position there, at which point he began giving Isabel production feedback on her earliest singles, a relationship that, per Music Connection, evolved into the current arrangement in which "all of Isabel's music has been written as a duo (with Thomas doing all the production)."

Slumbo Labs is founded and run by Jake Ottmann, who simultaneously holds the title of Senior Vice President of A&R at Warner/Chappell Music, a post he has held since 2013, and carries a senior A&R affiliation connected to RCA Records. This internship-to-staff-engineer pipeline inside a boutique A&R and production house is the clearest documented account of how Thomas broke into the industry, and it directly precedes and enables Isabel's own RCA signing story; the two paths, brother and sister, run through the same building.

Building Isabel LaRosa's Catalog

From Isabel's viral 2022 breakout single "I'm Yours" (Thomas credited as producer, composer, mixing/mastering engineer and recording engineer) through her 2024 single "Muse" and on to her full-length debut album Raven, released April 18, 2025, Thomas LaRosa is credited as co-writer and/or producer on essentially the entirety of Isabel's discography. On Raven specifically, per Wikipedia's album credits, Thomas is credited on 13 of the album's 14 tracks, the sole exception being "See You Again," written and produced solely by frequent collaborator Lucas Sim (with Thomas still credited on mixing). Elsewhere on the record he shares production duties with outside names including Ojivolta on opener "Famous," Ian Kirkpatrick on "Home," and The Monsters & Strangerz on "Cry for You," but on tracks like "Pretty Boy," "Favorite" and closer "Burning" he is the sole credited producer.

Isabel has repeatedly described the arrangement in near-identical terms across interviews. Per Karma! Magazine (May 15, 2025): “Thomas produces everything… We write everything together. He's honestly such a massive part of the creative process, I would not be here without him,” and separately in the same piece, “Thomas and I are writing all the time. I feel anxious if I don't write.” Principle Magazine, covering Isabel in May 2026, echoed the description: “LaRosa is deeply involved in every part of it, writing and producing all of her music alongside her brother, Thomas, while also co-directing and often fully directing her visuals” (a directing habit explored on its own in a separate feature on Isabel's visual control). The Raven album itself carries a mythology built around a raven figure, covered in depth in a companion piece on the Psychopomp and raven concept behind the album and tour; Thomas's production is the sonic architecture underneath that concept across all but one of its tracks.

Because the sibling pairing involves an alternative-leaning producer-brother and a moody, distinctive-voiced younger sister, press coverage has repeatedly drawn comparisons to the Finneas/Billie Eilish model, a comparison Isabel has addressed directly in multiple interviews. Thomas is also a credited live and recorded guitarist, with a guitar credit on "Muse" and a touring presence alongside Isabel that reviewers have singled out; concert coverage from her international tour dates has described him as "a weapon on guitar" during stops in Sydney and Boston.

Ari Abdul and "BABYDOLL"

Separate from the Isabel catalog, Thomas built a friendship with Ari Abdul that predates her viral fame. Multiple sources describe him as her "best friend," who invited her to record together at his workspace in 2021, a session that produced "BABYDOLL," a song Ari Abdul was reportedly reluctant to make at first, per Wikipedia's entry on the song. That informal session became one of the biggest viral pop moments of the era: "BABYDOLL" achieved RIAA Gold certification in the United States (500,000 units), SNEP Gold in France (100,000), RMNZ Gold in New Zealand (15,000), ZPAV Platinum in Poland (50,000) and BPI Silver in the UK (200,000). The song's certification-heavy, chart-light profile, gold or higher in five countries without major chart entries, is itself the subject of a dedicated feature, Gold in Five Countries, Zero Chart Entries: The Ari Abdul Paradox, and the origin story of the track is told in full in The Accident That Went Gold: How Ari Abdul's Babydoll Happened.

Thomas's writing and production role extended across the rest of Ari Abdul's 2022 Fallen Angel EP, credited as writer and producer (or co-producer) on "Taste," "Hush," "Stay," "Cursed" and "Hellgirl," several of which also carry an Isabel LaRosa writing credit, folding both LaRosa siblings into the same Ari Abdul sessions. He returned as lyricist, composer and producer on 2023's "You Belong to Me" from Ari's CCTV EP, working alongside Lucas Sim and under the same Jake Ottmann A&R umbrella that oversees Slumbo Labs. Ari Abdul's own long-running songwriting partnership with Ella Boh, documented separately in Ari and Ella: Songwriting Partners for Three Years Before the World Knew, ran on a parallel track to her sessions with Thomas, placing him inside a small, overlapping circle of writers around Ari Abdul's early catalog rather than a single exclusive partnership.

Sound and Production Style

Thomas's signature production palette sits at the intersection of dark pop, alt-pop, electropop and gothic or industrial pop, a sound he has applied consistently across both the Isabel LaRosa and Ari Abdul catalogs. Isabel's Raven album, which Thomas produced almost in its entirety, has been described in genre coverage as blending industrial synth textures with whisper-pop vocals, built on nocturnal synth throbs, deep Reese basslines and atmospheric, echoing synths that draw on industrial pop, synth-wave, indie-rock and gothic-pop vocabularies. The Ari Abdul catalog he produced leans into a related but distinct dark-pop register with R&B, trap and alternative textures, ethereal top-lines set against heavier low-end programming, consistent with the vibe-heavy, trap-adjacent production style attributed to the Fallen Angel EP cycle.

As a performer rather than purely a studio figure, Thomas is a credited guitarist across the catalog and plays live guitar during Isabel's tour sets, with his Arctic Monkeys-referencing guitar-tone recreation content on social media pointing to a stated formative influence. Apple Music's algorithmic "similar artists" placement surfaces names including Ella Boh, Ex Habit, Nic Dean, Chris Grey, gonedark and Dutch Melrose as adjacent to the LaRosa siblings' orbit, several of whom also appear as remixers on Isabel's "Her Face" single, but no confirmed production or writing credit directly linking Thomas to those artists has been found, and this adjacency should be read as algorithmic proximity rather than a confirmed collaborator list.

Business Side

Thomas's professional home base is Slumbo Labs, the boutique production and A&R operation founded by Jake Ottmann, whose day job as Senior Vice President of A&R at Warner/Chappell Music and senior A&R ties to RCA Records make Slumbo Labs a talent pipeline that has fed both Thomas's production career and Isabel's own signing story. That structure is examined in a dedicated feature, The Slumbo Labs Universe: How Thomas LaRosa Produced Two Careers Out of One Friendship, which frames Slumbo Labs as the connective tissue behind both the Isabel LaRosa catalog and the Ari Abdul collaborations.

His publishing entity is registered as Thomas LaRosa Productions, which appears alongside Sony/ATV Tunes LLC (ASCAP) as a publisher on the "BABYDOLL" credits, with Dalia Publishing Ltd. and Sony/ATV Music Publishing (UK) Ltd. listed as sub-publishers, per MusicBrainz. That points to a standard co-publishing arrangement with a major publisher rather than full independent ownership of his compositions. No formal ASCAP or BMI public repertoire search results were retrievable in the course of this research, so the fuller publishing picture beyond the "BABYDOLL" credit line remains unconfirmed.

A shift is visible in his own release credits: his 2023 solo single "Good Girl" carries a Slumbo Labs phonographic copyright, while his November 2025 single "Perfume" is credited "℗ 2025 Thomas LaRosa under exclusive license to The System," a separate imprint from Slumbo Labs. Whether this reflects an evolving deal structure specific to his personal artist project, a broader label transition, or something else is unclear; "The System" appears in only a single credit listing. Isabel's management is publicly identified as Ron Shapiro and Joe Hegleman of Have Fun Management, though it is not confirmed whether that relationship extends to Thomas individually.

Solo Artist Career

Alongside his production work, Thomas has steadily built his own artist discography since 2023: "Good Girl" (May 10, 2023, under Slumbo Labs), "Like a Dream" (2023, with a sped-up version released May 2, 2025), "Dangerous" (February 28, 2024, co-written and produced with Lucas Sim), "Like the Way You" (2024), "Scream My Name" (2024, with a sped-up push in early 2025), "Perfume" (November 21, 2025, under The System) and "LIKE A MOVIE" (January 27, 2026, a collaboration with Billy Jean and the KPop Demon Hunters Cast). Genius's artist bio for Thomas describes him plainly as “a very talented producer, writer, singer, guitarist… produced multiple TikTok hits such as 'HAUNTED' and 'BABYDOLL'… also soon to release his own song 'Good girl.'” Taken together, the solo catalog signals a parallel ambition beyond behind-the-scenes production, even as his primary public identity remains tied to Isabel's and Ari Abdul's records.

Social Presence

On Instagram, Thomas posts under @thomas.larosa to roughly 75,000 followers across 45 posts, with content mixing song teasers ("i'm almost done with this song it's coming soon i promise"), tour-life posts referencing Isabel's Psychopomp tour ("Psychopomp europe tour so far") and release announcements ("perfume is out!!"). On TikTok, under @thomaslarosa8, prior research placed his following in the range of roughly 128,000 followers and about 7.5 million cumulative likes as of early research, though exact current figures should be treated as approximate given how quickly short-form counts shift. His YouTube channel publishes official audio uploads for his solo singles, each cross-linking back to Instagram and TikTok. Content themes across platforms lean into behind-the-scenes studio clips, guitar-tone recreation tutorials, and glimpses of touring life supporting Isabel internationally, rather than lifestyle or brand-building content. A separate handle, @larosa.music on Instagram may also be his, though its exact status is unclear.

Personal Side

Across the available record, Thomas reads as the quieter, behind-the-scenes counterpart to Isabel's public-facing artist persona, a dynamic Isabel herself has repeatedly reinforced by describing him as inseparable from her creative identity. Their bond reads as unusually close and enduring even by sibling-collaborator standards: both have described writing together as a near-daily, near-compulsive habit rather than a purely professional arrangement, a working relationship tracing back to Thomas being 11 and Isabel being 7 years old. His friendship with Ari Abdul, described as a "best friend" relationship that predated her viral career, further points toward a personality oriented around close, long-standing creative partnerships rather than transactional industry networking. As of this research, Thomas LaRosa has given no known standalone solo press interview; virtually every direct quote attributed to him appears embedded within Isabel LaRosa-focused press coverage or brief joint social content.

Timeline

Frequently asked

Is Thomas LaRosa related to Isabel LaRosa?

Yes. Thomas LaRosa is Isabel LaRosa's older brother, born in 2001 to her 2004, and has been her primary producer and co-writer since the two began making music together as children in Annapolis, Maryland.

Did Thomas LaRosa produce all of Isabel LaRosa's music?

He is credited as producer and/or co-writer on nearly her entire discography, including 13 of the 14 tracks on her 2025 debut album Raven. The sole exception on that album, "See You Again," was written and produced solely by Lucas Sim, though Thomas is still credited on mixing.

What is Thomas LaRosa's connection to Ari Abdul's "BABYDOLL"?

Thomas and Ari Abdul are described as longtime best friends; he invited her to record at his workspace in 2021, a session that produced "BABYDOLL," which went on to earn gold or higher certifications in five countries.

Does Thomas LaRosa have his own music career separate from producing?

Yes. Since 2023 he has released a string of solo singles, including "Good Girl," "Dangerous," "Scream My Name," "Perfume" and "LIKE A MOVIE," while continuing his production work for Isabel LaRosa and Ari Abdul.

What is Slumbo Labs?

Slumbo Labs is a boutique production and A&R house founded by Jake Ottmann, who also serves as Senior Vice President of A&R at Warner/Chappell Music with ties to RCA Records. Thomas began there as an intern, was promoted to an engineering role, and it remains his documented professional base.

Selected discography and production credits

For the fuller story of the operation Thomas works inside, see The Slumbo Labs Universe: How Thomas LaRosa Produced Two Careers Out of One Friendship. Isabel LaRosa's own wiki entry and the companion pieces on her Raven album mythology and Governors Ball full-circle moment expand on the catalog he produced. On the Ari Abdul side, the origin story of "BABYDOLL", its certification-without-charts paradox, and Ari Abdul's parallel songwriting partnership with Ella Boh round out the wider creative circle Thomas LaRosa has quietly powered from behind the board.