A smoky, slow-burning fever dream of memory, longing, and late-night introspection, “Brought It Down” finds Tomás Tomás at his most cinematic and vulnerable, opening a shadowy portal into the haunting world of his debut EP ‘Sweet Sleep.’ Co-directed by Tomás Tomás and actor Jaeden Martell, the accompanying music video deepens that atmosphere, drifting through a haze of New York moments and fragmentary vignettes, turning the song’s ache into a nocturnal collage of connection and collapse.

Stream: “Brought It Down” – Tomás Tomás

There’s a smokiness to Tomás Tomás’ latest single that hits you long before the first lyric arrives – a silken, shadowy pull that feels equal parts intimate and unsettling.

It’s as if the whole song lives inside a dimly lit memory, flickering with ache, reflection, and unguarded truth – the kind of stuff that can bring you down. It’s all happening in the space between your heartbeat and your breath, suspended in that quiet, fragile place where night turns into morning. It floats like a secret you can’t quite name, humming with tension, tenderness, and that slow, sinking ache of trying to understand yourself in real time. Gentle guitar strums melt into a dark, ambient backdrop as Thomas Fattorusso’s voice spills through the haze, so soft and yet impossibly intense. The whole world feels slightly tilted, slightly blurred, like those late nights that become lifelong memories. A spellbinding exhale of ache and atmosphere, “Brought It Down” is a clouded emotional reckoning wrapped in smoke, stillness, and raw, living feeling.

will you look at the sun
with separating the art from us
and i used to have a thought
til i put it down

what’s this i taste
how much can i get
you say “honey”
the sweetest around
what’s this i crave
the more that i get
when you say my name
it’s the sweetest of sounds

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the single and Jaeden Martell-directed music video for “Brought It Down,” an ethereal and achingly intimate standout from Tomás Tomás’ debut EP Sweet Sleep, out November 14^th via Keep Good Company Records. A dreamlike collection the artist calls “music you walk to,” Sweet Sleep was born from curiosity, isolation, and the search for meaning in a year when time moved strangely. “Going through life is confusing, and fascinating, I feel like I’m constantly searching for answers and meaning,” he reflects. “I tend to reflect a lot, but through 2024 I had little time to smell the roses or any flower of any kind. Eventually I resorted to isolation, and it was liberating. Making this project became my therapy. I still have so many questions about this life, but speaking my mind through sound has brought me so much comfort. That’s truly what this project means to me. It’s an extension of my search for meaning. I reckon this music is best heard while on an evening walk.”

Tomás Tomás’ teased Sweet Sleep earlier this fall with “9th Life,” the record’s stirringly seductive opening single – a shiver-inducing dreamstate that feels like stepping out of this reality and into one of the artist’s own design. Inspired by a multitude of turbulent emotions, it’s a raw, lo-fi portal built from nothing more than a busted guitar, an earbud mic, and borrowed corners of friends’ apartments. “It was inspired by the need for growth. False love. Fear. And a feeling of always falling short,” he shares. “The final lyric is, ‘cut away the longest hair, this time I’m almost there.’” The result is a cinematic kind of intimacy – imperfect, urgent, and deeply human – that sets the tone for the EP’s entire world.

Where “9th Life” opens the EP in a dreamlike glow, “Brought It Down” sinks deeper into the shadows, a brooding and beautifully human unraveling that feels both fragile and fiercely alive.

It is a darker corner of the Sweet Sleep universe, where the intimacy gets heavier and the air grows thick with tension. Gentle guitar strums flicker like dying streetlights against a fogged-out backdrop, and Tomás’ voice, an aching caress, drips with a kind of quiet desperation. The song churns in that deeply relatable way: The craving, the cost, the surrender, the way saying someone’s name can feel like salvation and ruin at the same time. It is cinematic and angsty, tender and tumultuous, a slow-blooming reckoning that hurts with raw, unguarded truth.

As Tomás recalls, the song began during a moment of exhaustion and escape. “About a year ago I had been the assistant director on a music video for like a legendary contemporary artist,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “I learned so much, but when we wrapped production, I was just a complete shell of myself. I couldn’t wait to fly back to New York and honestly just isolate myself and make some music. I hadn’t felt like that for a really long time. Jaeden was out of town so he let me crash at his place for a few weeks. I woke up every morning, had a coffee and smoked a you know what and recorded every idea in my head. I was pretending I was in Amsterdam. “Brought It Down” was one of those. It started out as more of an upbeat song. It sucked. What I ended up doing was slowing the whole song down and that really seemed to work. It gave the melodies more room to breathe. The vibe felt like it had shifted to match the sentiment of the lyrics. It was probably the first time I looked at a song in terms of what it “needs” to be rather than forcing it into a hole of what I ‘want’ it to be.”

“This song was really just a result of being worn out,” he continues. “After coming off a year of working in film as an assistant director, I realized that I had been helping others’ visions come to life for a long while. This fulfilled a need to make something for myself. ‘I used to have a thought’ was truly how I felt. I pushed my own personal creativity down for a long while and this track brought me back to life. I recorded it super minimally – all the instruments were recorded on my iPhone in Jaeden’s apartment. I sat on the floor and tracked the song in about a day. The minimal approach seems to help me find the sentiment much quicker than a big studio with bells and whistles.”

i knew there was a cost
hanging above the cross
and i used to have a thought
til i put it down
she said all that will change
and it won’t leave a doubt
she said all that is strange left you humble
she said all that will change
and it won’t leave a doubt
she said all that is strange left you humble

Visually, the “Brought It Down” music video – a breathtaking collaboration with Tomás’ friend, actor Jaeden Martell – feels like a wandering memory captured in grayscale.

It’s hazy, disorienting, almost ghostly at times. Smoke and streetlight mingle over quick flashes of New York City life, neither glamorized nor sanitized. Good moments, terrible moments, moments of connection and moments where everything simply slips away. It feels like looking through the eyes of someone drifting through their own story. A fog of reflection, a loop of longing, a meditation on disconnect and renewal.

“The video serves as part one of a longer film,” Tomás shares. “We went with a minimal approach here and shot it ourselves, running around NY with our actors for three days. We’re setting the stage for a larger concept here. Consider this a prelude – the appetizer before a steak dinner.”

There’s an ache threaded through “Brought It Down” that mirrors the EP’s emotional DNA. Tomás often shies away from explaining the lyrics too directly, preferring to leave space for the listener’s own interpretation. “[It’s] definitely achey,” he admits. “That usually isn’t the intention going into a song, but one way or another things usually turn out that way. The meaning of the lyrics is a moving needle for me. As a listener, knowing those things can sometimes take the mystery out.” Still, the feeling is unmistakable. When he sings “when you say my name, it’s the sweetest of sounds,” the moment lands like a bruise you press just to see if it still hurts.

His process, shaped by solitude and instinct, has become foundational to this chapter. “Creating it really felt like I stumbled onto something in terms of my process,” he says. “I think the way I made the song will inform how I treat most of my art going forward. I’m really excited to share it, which is such a foreign feeling.” That vulnerability ripples throughout Sweet Sleep, a project written across friends’ living rooms, captured through a headphone mic, pieced together like a diary whispered under low light.

As Sweet Sleep arrives in the world tomorrow (November 14), “Brought It Down” stands as one of its most hauntingly beautiful portals. It’s a song you feel before you understand, a song that asks you to sit with the fog rather than look for the exit. Watch this special music video exclusively on Atwood Magazine and let Tomás Tomás’ art wash over your eyes and ears. It lingers in that gray, glowing space between dreams and waking, carrying the weight of everything unspoken and inviting you to return to its haze whenever you need to breathe again.

With his artistry now stepping into the light, Tomás Tomás joined Atwood Magazine to talk more about the project’s creation, the world behind these songs, and the moments that shaped his debut.

— —

:: stream/purchase Sweet Sleep here ::

:: connect with Tomás Tomás here ::

— —

Stream: “Brought It Down” – Tomás Tomás

A CONVERSATION WITH TOMÁS TOMÁS

Tomás Tomás: I look at ‘Tomás Tomás’ as more of a project than an identity. Most people call me Tom. Recently someone started calling me Thomas and I quite like it. But I’ve been making music for a while. I’ve made and scrapped projects more times than I can count. The last go around I thought I had put it down for good, but music is like that one friend who you could not talk to for months, then you pick up the phone one day and chat for hours. I make most of my music in seclusion nowadays and I think that really informs the feel of it. I’ve really embraced that notion. I reckon this project and my next are best ingested on evening strolls. In the beginning of “I Gotta Look Up More,” the countdown was actually a voice memo I recorded of a tree lighting ceremony in Tompkins Square Park while on a walk.

Tomás Tomás: Usually when I get asked this I sort of stumble and say “there’s guitars and stuff”. I uploaded some songs to chat gpt out of curiosity and it said it was “art pop”. Not sure how I feel about that, but I think we just uploaded it under “alternative” for DSPs. As for inspo, lately I’ve been super inspired by film scores. ‘Never Cursed’ by Jonny Greenwood from Phantom Thread has been stuck on me like crazy. Looking back I think building tension was something I spent a lot of time on with this record.

Tomás Tomás: Definitely achey. That usually isn’t the intention going into a song, but one way or another things usually turn out that way. I think it’s something that’s built in from a sonic perspective at this point. Maybe this one more than others. But the meaning of the lyrics is a moving needle for me. Personally I don’t like to say too much about it. Just because I find that as a listener, knowing those things can sometimes take the mystery out. Or it’s harder to connect to it when you already know what it is.

Tomás Tomás: We made a point to never play the songs while shooting the video. There were certain scenes we actually shot to completely different music. One scene we shot to “Skee Yee” by Sexxy Red. But while I was making the songs I would have different movies on in the background, and it would always sync up in a way I could have never come up with. It made the films feel different, but what was interesting was it made the song feel different. We wanted to lean into that idea while shooting. We wanted to feel surprised in the edit, and just get the story across. The goal would be to show it to an audience in a theater at some point. I think it would be sick for it to be a part of a short film programming. For now, I just hope whoever sees it has a strong opinion on it.

Tomás Tomás: I mean the best I can possibly hope for is people can connect to it in their own specific way. If it can summon a memory or a thought, then that’s the most success a song can possibly have. I reckon it’s best listened to alone. Creating it really felt like I stumbled onto something in terms of my process. I think the way I made the song will inform how I treat most of my art going forward. I’m really excited to share it, which is such a foreign feeling.

— —

:: stream/purchase Sweet Sleep here ::

:: connect with Tomás Tomás here ::

— —

Stream: “Brought It Down” – Tomás Tomás

— — — —

Connect to Tomás Tomás on
Facebook, Instagram

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © Jess Farran

:: Stream Tomás Tomás ::