By Hasan Beyaz
Creative Director: Jose Moreno // Creative Assistant: Marie Terese Quirapas // Visual Director: Jihoon Won // Photographer : Hongje An // Co-Producer: Kuya Allen // Photography Assistants: Soomin Choi, Daney Kang , Jungmin Ha // Production Company: Mondays // Production Manager: Charlene Ho // Production Assistants: Glory Chen, Matthew Ma, Joanne Zhang, 김은총
For a band still defining itself in public, KAVE already have a very clear sense of what they are not.
They are not interested in staying in one lane. Their music moves through rock, EDM, pop and alternative sounds without treating genre as a rulebook; their live shows can turn from full-band catharsis to choreography in seconds. And, despite the polished expectations often placed on Korean artists, they are not much interested in presenting a softened, easily sellable version of themselves either.
That freedom has become central to KAVE’s identity. Led by singer-songwriter GAHO, the South Korean five-piece – completed by HYUN, OWNR, JUN and JISANG – are old friends and long-time collaborators, brought together by a shared instinct to follow an idea wherever it goes. Sometimes that means making room for every member to take centre stage. Sometimes it means building a song around a narrative GAHO cannot fully explain until the right sound appears.
Sometimes it means barking like a dog in a track, even when someone tells you not to, as they do on “Legend” – a detail GAHO says his former company pushed back against. He did it anyway. Then, during a London date on KAVE’s first European tour, a fan began barking at them from the crowd. The band brought her on stage and into the moment; by the end of the show, it had become its own kind of call-and-response: slightly unhinged, but completely theirs. “I knew I was right,” GAHO says about the choice. “I told the company to fuck off.”
That moment gets at the strange chemistry of KAVE. There is a restless, rebellious energy at the centre of the band, but it is held together by deep familiarity. The members have known one another through school, university, studios and the years before recognition arrived. JISANG met GAHO by chance before “Start Over” became a global hit, when he was simply asked to play guitar at a rentable studio. JUN’s first KAVE tour was also his first time leaving Korea. HYUN remembers GAHO once arriving at his house with a spray bottle to drag him out of bed, into the sunlight, and eventually back into making music.
Their Cityscapes – New Horizons European tour took that shared history somewhere unexpected: seven cities in two weeks, and audiences thousands of miles from home already singing along, dancing, barking, and finding themselves in the music.