Date Signed: February 2022
Label: Slumbo Labs / RCA
Type of Music: Pop
Management: Ron Shapiro and Joe Hegleman - Have Fun Management
Publicity: Amanda Charney, [email protected]
Amanda Zimmerman - RCA, [email protected]
Web: isabel-larosa.com
A&R: Jake Ottmann, Sr. Vice-President, RCA Records; Founder, Slumbo Labs
Signed to Slumbo Labs/RCA, Isabel LaRosa learned jazz standards from her father at an early age, and older brother Thomas started on the guitar. Jamming around Annapolis, the sibling duo first began songwriting while Isabel was in elementary school, with Thomas interning at Slumbo Labs in New York after high school. Moving into an engineering position, Thomas began providing sister Isabel with feedback as she began to release singles, and all of Isabel’s music has been written as a duo (with Thomas doing all the production). “Isabel and I have been working on music since she was 7, and I was 11,” he shares. “I don’t think there’s anybody that it feels more natural to work with than Isabel.”
Following three independent releases (“16 Candles,” “Closer,” and “Game Boy,” all in 2021), LaRosa’s music started getting attention online, and she was approached about a record deal. The timing of the offer, says LaRosa, came down to a combination of online momentum (the numbers were moving), and the sound feeling “right” (her confidence had caught up). She feels that her first RCA single, “HAUNTED” (from debut EP i’m watching you), was where things “clicked into place,” and her music started gaining traction on TikTok. 2022’s “i’m yours” garnered over 150 million streams, with LaRosa sharing that what landed for listeners was “the feeling, and the way the visuals matched that feeling sonically.”
Of Jake Ottmann, Sr. Vice-President at RCA (and founder of Slumbo Labs), LaRosa says that Ottmann really helped her find who she was artistically by advising her to write about things that mattered to her—and to not just focus on cool lyrics. Ottmann is quick to add that LaRosa stood out for him because “she had a vision as a young person, and a clarity that I found really well-formed and beyond her years. She knew exactly what she wanted to sound like and who she wanted to be.”
Following 20 shows supporting Nessa Barrett’s national Young Forever tour, LaRosa’s latest release is five-song EP YOU FEAR THE GOD THAT LOVES YOU. – Andrea Beenham
