Los Angeles-born Finneas O'Connell, known professionally as Finneas, balances multiple creative roles as a behind-the-scenes songwriter, producer, performer, and occasional actor. His polished yet introspective take on alternative pop first gained wide notice through the late-2010s Grammy-nominated work he created for his younger sister, Billie Eilish, after earlier teen appearances in projects such as the 2011 feature Bad Teacher and the 2015 season of Glee. Once her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? arrived in March 2019 and he joined her touring band, he issued his own first full-length, Blood Harmony, that October on the OYOY imprint. Two years afterward he supplied the original score for the Megan Park-directed drama The Fallout.
Finneas Baird O'Connell entered the world in Los Angeles in 1997 to actress and screenwriter Maggie Baird and actor Patrick O'Connell. His sister, Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell, arrived four and a half years later. While still a child performer he began composing and tracking songs around age twelve. His screen résumé expanded with a 2013 role in the music-centered film Life Inside Out, which also featured his mother and included one of his tracks on its soundtrack, followed by guest spots on Modern Family and Aquarius. In 2015 he portrayed the recurring character Alistair during Glee’s sixth season. Early the next year his guitar-pop outfit the Slightlys released the single “Desperate Measures.”
Later in 2016 Eilish broke through with the Finneas-produced “Ocean Eyes,” a track he had initially written for his own band; after accumulating tens of millions of streams it climbed to number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100. The siblings maintained their close collaboration on Eilish’s 2017 Interscope EP Don’t Smile at Me, which Finneas co-wrote and produced. Their standalone single “Bored” appeared that same year on the soundtrack for the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. By 2019 Eilish had become a global star whose full-length debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, reached the top of the Billboard 200; Finneas again served as producer and co-writer. Before year’s end he had also begun producing material for artists including Selena Gomez and Camila Cabello.
Finneas unveiled his solo debut Blood Harmony in October 2019, an intimate collection of relationship songs that propelled him into the top five of Billboard’s Next Big Sound chart. The following month he earned five Grammy nominations tied to Eilish’s album, covering Record, Album, Song, and Producer of the Year as well as Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. In 2022 he composed the score for the high-school drama The Fallout.
