"We'd finish the album, I then heard "Thumbs" which gave me these vibes of fame and black and gold and just like some of my favorite soulful songs.

In terms of music notation, "Thumbs" was composed using 44 common time in the key of C minor, with a moderately fast tempo of 135 beats per minute.

[2] The music video, which was directed by Hayley Young,[3] was uploaded to Carpenter's Vevo account on YouTube on February 10, 2017.

The video features Carpenter singing the song with several bored people inside the subway on a typical big-city daily commute.

[5] Brittany Goldfield Rodrigues of Andpop said "the jazzy vibe of this song sold us, and the scatting just made us play it on repeat.

"[6] Carpenter first performed the song on the Honda Stage at the iHeartRadio Theater in Los Angeles on August 25, 2016, along with other new music before the release of Evolution.