After a brief pause in the whirlwind of his early career, Thomas Headon returns with a new EP, determined to find balance — and ready to fight for it. Read our latest Hype cover feature.

Words: Abigail Firth.
Photos: shotbymelissaa.

This year, Thomas Headon logged off. For the first time in the five years he's been putting out music, he put the phone down and found a new perspective. "I deleted Instagram and TikTok and everything for probably a month. Coming back, I was like, what is a Brat Summer?" says Thomas in his first catch-up with Dork in over a year. Strikingly, he doesn't seem to have changed much. He's still the same giddy kid we've always been met with, but the music he's putting out and the stories he's telling suggest he's a very different person. (And if you needed any indication he's changed, he recently regretted a tattoo of a loaf of bread on his arm before he'd even left the chair. That's growth.)

At the start of 2024, Thomas was putting together his debut album, long-awaited in his career so far in EP jail. He even managed to get the first single, 'Middle of the Night', out in February before the record he had planned quickly became irrelevant.

"I don't know if the label will tell me off for saying that we were working towards an album, but then I went through a breakup, and it was like," (he mimics an explosion) "and then I was like, this is so pointless. I completely fell out of love with music and being online. I literally just wanted to be around my friends and do that all the time and exist without having to be an artist."