Since the release of their debut EP Islands for Each, Dabda has spent the past decade building a solid sense of unity through a wide range of experiences. The band has performed on festival stages both in Korea and abroad, toured across multiple countries, and shared stages with international artists in each other’s local scenes. Despite differences in language or nationality, the way musicians communicate through music proved to be universal. Through these experiences, Dabda learned how to generate energy on stage and amplify it together with their audience. That accumulated momentum has become a positive force and a creative foundation for the band’s upcoming second full-length album. Following the single DDDD!, DABDA now releases single Dear Hope, taking another step toward the album set to arrive this summer.

Dear Hope marks the second chapter of the band’s journey toward their sophomore album. Originally nicknamed “Mr. Hope” during early rehearsals, the song gradually evolved through live sessions and demo recordings into a richer and more expansive piece. Across its six-minute runtime, Dabda sends floating melodies into the distance, carrying their ambivalent emotions toward hope. Though the track moves through diverse layers and stylistic shifts, it ultimately converges into a sound unmistakably stamped with the band’s identity. Dabda’s musical world, shaped by years of growth, feels more solid than ever. Standing alongside youth, Dear Hope becomes a song sung together—an open letter to hope itself.

“Dear Hope is a song that was built around a single theme—hope—from the very earliest sketches of the track. (Usually we tend to attach a theme later in the process.) ‘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.

While I was exploring those feelings, our drummer Seunghyun focused instead on the brighter, more energetic side of hope, driving the song forward with powerful rhythms. (At the same time, he once joked that if hope were personified and he ever met it in real life, he might want to punch it at least once.)

Even so, I still wish that hope could fill people’s hearts—including my own—a little more. 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. This song is sent to ‘Hope,’ who only truly appears when those mirage-like, shallow breaths finally become us.” (Dabda / Jiae Kim)