Dabda return with the soaring new single ‘Dear Hope’

South Korea’s Dabda are back and they brought the feels. The indie math rock four-piece have just dropped Dear Hope, their second single of the year via Electric Muse, and it’s a big one — six minutes of floating melodies, dynamic shifts, and that unmistakable Dabda energy that fans of the live scene already know well. It’s the latest preview of their upcoming sophomore full-length, due this summer.

Hope Is Complicated — And That’s the Point

The song grew out of a real tension. Vocalist and guitarist Jiae Kim found herself sitting with the contradiction at hope’s core — something so close and familiar, yet never quite free from anxiety and restlessness. Rather than write around it, she leaned straight in:

“‘Hope’ is a word that feels close enough to us that saying it out loud never sounds strange. Yet, despite its dazzling brightness, it often seems to carry anxiety and restlessness along with it like inseparable companions. That contradiction never sat quite right with me, so I found myself writing and singing about the moments of anguish that grow out of hope.”

Meanwhile, drummer Seunghyun Lee took the opposite angle — channeling the brighter, more kinetic side of hope into powerful rhythms that propel the track forward. (He also apparently once joked that if hope were a real person, he’d want to punch it at least once. Honestly, relatable.) That push and pull between the two perspectives is exactly what makes Dear Hope feel so alive.

Six Minutes Well Spent

Originally nicknamed Mr. Hope during early rehearsals, the track evolved steadily through live sessions and demos into something much larger. Across its runtime, Dabda moves through diverse layers and stylistic shifts before converging into a sound that’s distinctly, unmistakably theirs. It’s the kind of song that earns every second of its length.

Kim closes the song’s statement with something quietly beautiful: “Fleeting hope, even futile hope, is what keeps us going. And perhaps because of that, we might still be able to testify that hope exists.” ‘Dear Hope’ is, in the end, an open letter — sent out into the distance, hoping it lands.

A Decade in the Making

Since their 2016 debut EP ‘Island of Each’, Dabda has spent ten years forging their sound on festival stages across Korea and abroad, touring internationally, and sharing bills with artists from entirely different scenes and languages. That accumulated experience — the energy, the communion, the proof that music communicates beyond words — is the foundation everything they’re building toward now.

Following 2020’s full-length ‘But, All The Shining Things Are’ and the 2023 EP ‘Yonder’, the band has been steadily gaining momentum. Their previous single DDDD! kicked off this new chapter, and Dear Hope deepens it. The sophomore album is coming this summer, and if these two singles are any indication, it’s going to be worth the wait.

Dabda — Jiae Kim (Vox/Guitar) | Jungwoong Park (Guitar) | Keohyun Noh (Bass) | Seunghyun Lee (Drums)

Dear Hope is out now on Electric Muse. Find Dabda on Bandcamp, Instagram, YouTube, and beyond.