Behind the Board: Good Sleepy Lead Singer Thomas Sullivan Discusses Writing & Recording

Over the last couple of months, Good Sleepy has been setting the stage for the release of their new album, Constant Humming. The band’s sophomore LP, it is set for release on February 13th, 2026. The album has been preceded by the release of the singles “Zzz” and, more recently, “Looming” and “Trap.” The follow-up to their debut album everysinglelittlebit, this record will feature a darker, rawer, and more dynamic sound. Featuring 14 new tracks, the album explores themes of nostalgia, broken relationships, early adulthood, and emotional complexities.

Formed in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2018, Good Sleepy was originally just a low-scale DIY project. Their original demo was titled Rest Easy, which helped guide them towards a record deal with No Sleep Records. Drawing on influences from various eras of emo, the band members view their music as an outlet for their collective experiences and emotions. everysinglelittlebit was released in 2021, and then was followed up with the i better start dreaming, Vol. 1 EP in 2022. Some of their most significant sources of inspiration include Ben Quad, Carly Cosgrove, The Wonder Years, and Marietta.

Good Sleepy lead singer Thomas Sullivan joins us today for a Behind the Board interview to discuss working in the studio and music production.

What do you do when you’re stuck creatively in the studio?

Thomas Sullivan: “We always try to plan ahead before we go to the studio. For us, this means fully demoing out the songs with all instrumentals, vocals, and MIDI tracks included. This gives us a solid foundation for what kind of sound we want for the song, small details in the arrangement, and overall, just saves money and time. However, a song doesn’t always work out the way you thought it would once you get to the studio. You are using different gear to record with, the overall energy in the room is different from the demoing process, and the stakes are higher. I can definitely think of a few occasions where these things have affected the song so much that we begin to doubt it.

“But even when we think a song is not the best, we make a point of finishing it. It’s always important to take a step back, eat some food, drink a coffee, collaborate and listen to the ideas of your producers and engineers, and I think most importantly, just get together in the live room and play the song out. This prevents us from getting burnt out in the studio, and can be super invigorating for the creative flow, helping to get us back on track.”

Have you ever scrapped an entire project after recording? Why?

“Yes, actually very recently. We’ve been writing for our upcoming album for a long time. Part of the reason it’s taken us so long to get this one done is because we wrote and recorded an entirely separate twelve-song LP back in 2023 that we mostly finished up with and then just decided we didn’t like it. The direction was just not where we wanted to be going, it wasn’t as thoughtfully planned out as we had tried to make it, and the recording quality was just not the best. We spared a few songs from that album that made it onto our upcoming one, but the rest have been buried for now.”

How important is studio ambiance, and how do you create yours?

“Super super important to us. Good energy is a requirement in the studio when we are recording. We try to make our lives as easy as possible before we get to the studio by being generally prepared and having a solid plan for whatever we want to record and how we want the session to be organized.

“The most important aspect of studio ambiance for us, however, is the relationship we have with whoever is producing us. We’ve been super lucky to have our good friend Charlie Burket produce us on this upcoming LP, who is just a joy to be around and is super talented, and our previous album was recorded by Gary Cioni at Sound Acres Studios. Gary hyped us up throughout the process, and he came to feel like another member of the band during the three weeks we spent there.”

Name one legendary recording studio you’d love to visit or record at.

“We would love to work with Will Yip at Studio 4 someday. Maybe not super well known on an industry-wide scale, but legendary to us. They’ve put out so many of our favourite records, it would be a dream to even just be in the room while a session is happening.”

What’s your opinion on Auto-Tune and pitch correction software?

“Auto-Tune and pitch correction software have debatedly become overused. They are super useful tools and can be essential to the vibe of a vocal performance, but they are not always needed. They can fix small mistakes that you didn’t catch during recording, provide more backup harmonies if you ran out of time to record, create cool vocal effects, and, at this point, they can even help to fix out-of-tune instruments. There’s no shame at all in using auto-tune or pitch correction.

“I think if you are going for more of a raw sound, then maybe avoid using it and try to get the recording right instead of fixing things later, it doesn’t need to be perfect. If you are going for a more clean, more produced sound, then it works super well and can even save time.”

How much of producing music is technical skill vs. intuition?

“There needs to be a balance of both. The intuitive side comes into play when making the decisions on what you want a production to sound like, and the technical side comes into play when you are actually trying to make it sound how you’ve imagined it. We always appreciate a producer who knows what they are doing on a technical level, because they are the ones who know the best mixing moves to make that will bring your ideas to life.”

What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten about music production?

“Use a reference track. Always. Bring a song into your session that is sonically similar to what you are going for (and usually bring the gain down about -6dB because of mastering). Having a song that is well-produced to compare your mix to as you go is super helpful.”

Which genre do you think is the hardest to produce and why?

“Probably classical music. When you’re recording an entire orchestra, you can have hundreds of microphones, which can result in a huge amount of bleed and phase issues, not to mention making decisions about how to balance them all in a mix. Microphone placement is super important in that context, and they have to place them in hard-to-reach areas a lot of the time. There’s real math and science that goes into that.”