What Makes wave to earth Sound Like wave to earth

Before looking for bands like wave to earth, it helps to name what you are actually looking for. The Seoul trio is Daniel Kim on vocals and guitar, John Cha on bass and Dong Q on drums, and they have been on the independent label WAVY since 2021. The Korea Times summed up their sound in 2025 as "hazy lo-fi guitar lines, soft jazz-inflected drumming and melancholy lyrics." That description holds up well as a checklist: clean electric guitar rather than distortion, drums played with a jazz touch, a low and gentle voice, and mid-tempo songs that put mood ahead of spectacle. Saxophone and electric piano often add color on record and on stage.

The jazz part is deliberate. Daniel Kim has said he suggested that Dong Q study jazz drumming early on, and he names the Taiwanese band Sunset Rollercoaster as a core model for working jazz instruments into rock songs. His wider list of influences runs from Radiohead, Oasis and Jeff Buckley to King Krule and Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

The sound is also moving. The second full-length bad pieces, released on August 7 with the title tracks "courage" and "hyang," trades some of the lo-fi haze for warmer, analog textures: acoustic guitar, pedal steel, nylon-string guitar, a Minimoog bass and a CP-70 electric piano. You can hear it first in the pre-release single "heaven and hell," where acoustic guitar and folksy pedal steel set a warm tone. Our guide to bad pieces goes through the album track by track. If you are new to the band, the usual way in is "bad" and "seasons" (2023), and the band's press materials put "seasons" past 500 million streams.

"the pieces tour" now heads to Asia: Bangkok on November 12, Manila on November 15, Hong Kong on November 18, Singapore on November 20, Kuala Lumpur on November 22, Taipei (TICC) on November 24, Osaka (BIGCAT) on November 26 and Tokyo (Zepp DiverCity) on November 27, then two Seoul nights at Korea University's Hwajeong Gymnasium on December 19 and 20. While you wait, the seven bands below each share at least one of those ingredients. For each, we say what overlaps, what does not, and where to start. The comparisons are our own listening notes unless a source is named.

The Closest Match: The Poles

If you only try one band from this list, make it The Poles. The link is not a matter of taste. Daniel Kim sings, plays guitar and synth in The Poles, and also produces, records and mixes the band's music, with Lee Hwang-je on bass and Kim Kyung-bae on drums. The band joined WAVY in 2024, so it shares a label with wave to earth. It shares artwork too: Hong Seungki, who designs wave to earth's covers, also works with The Poles, and the pianist Van Sion, who plays with wave to earth, appears on The Poles' 2025 single "Dancing Bird." People search for the two names together in English, Japanese and Chinese. This is not a side project, either. Daniel Kim was already fronting The Poles on festival stages in 2019, the year wave to earth released its first single.

What overlaps: the voice, obviously, and the melodic instincts that come with it. What differs is the engine room. The band's 2024 return leaned hard into rock, while the music keeps a lush, atmospheric pop side with experimental touches. In our ears, the jazz drumming gives way to a straighter rock backbeat, and the guitars are layered more thickly, with long ambient passages between the louder moments. Song titles such as "Space kids" and "Stargazing" suit the floating production. If wave to earth is a night bus, The Poles is the same route with the windows down and the volume higher.

Start with "Cares" (2024), the band's first single on WAVY, then "Space" (2021), the song that first found the band its listeners, then "Dancing Bird" (2025). The 2022 album The High Tide Club is the place to go next. Their most recent release is the single "Echo! (talk to me baby)," out in September 2025, and they played two nights of their own "space boys" concert at Myunghwa Live Hall in Seoul in November 2025.

Same Late-Night Mood: ADOY and Say Sue Me

These two bands get the feeling right with different tools. ADOY is a four-piece formed in 2016: Juhwan Oh on vocals, Zee on synths, Dayoung Jeong on bass and Geunchang Park on drums. They release music through Angel House, their own small production company, and the name is "Yoda" spelled backwards, after Juhwan's cat. ADOY is synth-led indie pop that moves between shimmering 1980s dream pop and what the band itself calls "commercial indie." Taiwanese press have called them a "Korean dream-pop band," and they have headlined in Taiwan five times. There is a real thread back to wave to earth here: Sunset Rollercoaster, the band Daniel Kim names as a model, remade ADOY's song "Balloon" for ADOY's 2023 EP us.

Our take: the mood matches, with soft male vocals, night-drive warmth and, on the new single "Gooood," a saxophone. The engine is different. ADOY runs on synths and a dance-ready rhythm, so it is glossier and more electronic than wave to earth. If you like wave to earth's gentler songs but want something to move to, start with "Grace" and "Wonder," both nominated at the Korean Music Awards, then "Gooood." That song came out on October 15 as half of the double single "Gooood / KONA," which the label calls a pre-release, so a larger release is on the way.

Say Sue Me comes from Busan, where the band formed in 2012: Choi Sumi sings, plays guitar and writes the lyrics, Kim Byungkyu plays guitar, writes most of the music and produces, Kim Jaeyoung plays bass and Lim Sungwan plays drums. Their sound is surf-inspired indie rock with jangly, reverb-soaked guitars, which the British site Drowned in Sound once called "surfgaze." The band names 1960s surf rock and 1990s indie rock among its influences, including Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Blur and The Ventures, and you can hear that older noise-pop lineage in their records.

Our take: Say Sue Me shares wave to earth's washed, clean guitar tone, its unhurried tempos and its wistful mood. The differences are the reference points (US and UK indie and surf rather than jazz), straighter rock drumming, no sax or keys, and a female lead voice that stays cool and unforced. Start with "Old Town" (2018), which won Best Modern Rock Song at the 2019 Korean Music Awards, then "So Tender" (2021), heard in the drama Nevertheless, then "Vacation" (2025) with Kim Hanjoo of Silica Gel. Their latest EP is Time is Not Yours (2025), released on the UK label Damnably, and they played Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival this summer.

Bigger Guitars, Same Ache: Nerd Connection

Nerd Connection met in Yonsei University's band club in 2012 and went professional in 2017: Seo Young-joo on vocals and acoustic guitar, leader Choi Seung-won on electric guitar and synth, Park Jae-hyun on bass and Shin Yeon-tae on drums. They are on the independent label Your Summer. Their aim is the British alternative rock of the late 1990s and early 2000s, a sound Seo has described as "a genre that's become a classic now." The band's own slogan is "(in a) dizzy world, warm music," and their songs keep returning to nostalgia for things that are gone.

What overlaps is partly on the record. Daniel Kim and Nerd Connection both name Radiohead and Oasis as influences, and Nerd Connection also lists The Black Skirts. Both are melody-first guitar bands with an emotional streak. What differs, in our ears, is scale: Nerd Connection writes for big rooms, with anthemic, stadium-sized dynamics, mostly Korean lyrics and a singer who belts where Daniel Kim holds back. There is no jazz drumming here. Pick them if your favorite wave to earth songs are the ones where the band leans into rock.

Start with "Good Night Good Dream" (2020), the song most people search for, then "Back in Time" (2020). Then play the 2026 EP On the Crest of a Wave, out on July 3, which mixes acoustic guitar with synths and looks back at youth as a run of endless waves. The band toured clubs with it, finishing in Seoul at Myunghwa Live Hall on September 5, and played Busan International Rock Festival this autumn. They played Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg in 2022 and their first overseas solo show, in Tokyo, in 2024.

Follow the Drums: dabda and Cadejo

Dong Q's light, jazz-inflected drumming is one of the quieter reasons wave to earth sounds the way it does. These two bands take the drums somewhere else, in opposite directions.

dabda is a four-piece on the independent label Electric Muse: Kim Jiae on vocals and guitar (she also writes the lyrics and designs the artwork), Park Jungwoong on guitar, Noh Keohyun on bass and Lee Seunghyun on drums. Their debut EP Island of Each came out in 2016. The music is math rock with a sunny tint, which Seattle radio station KEXP described as "pastel psychedelic": bright, interlocking clean guitars, shifting and odd-metered rhythms, and room for post-rock and dream-pop space. The drummer has called Takashi Kashikura of the Japanese band toe his role model, and the band made the 2021 single "Jungle Gym" with him. The lyrics often use bright music to get through darker days.

Our take: dabda shares wave to earth's warm, clean guitar tone, gentle vocals and balance of hope and melancholy. It is busier and more precise, with a female lead voice and no lo-fi blur. Think of it as the brightest and most technical pick on this list. Start with "Flower Tail" (2023), a KEXP Song of the Day, then "Jungle Gym," then "ON," the title track of their second full-length, ON, released on September 17. The band frames that album as a record about living fully, all the way to a hundred, and it was self-recorded in their own studio. dabda has played Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Germany.

Cadejo goes the other way, toward groove. The trio is Lee Taehun on guitar (he sometimes sings), Kim Jaeho on bass and synth and Kim Davin on drums, and they run their own operation. The music is built from improvisation: funk and groove rock that grows out of jamming, which Korean media have labeled "new jazz." Lee Taehun put it simply in a 2020 interview: "improvisation is the basis of all music." Their fourth album, ENDLESS (2025), was co-produced and dub-mixed by Uchida Naoyuki from Japan.

Our take: Cadejo shares the jazz-leaning, live-feel side of wave to earth's DNA, and little else. Much of it is instrumental, and it is funk, not soft vocal indie. If the moment you love in wave to earth is the drummer and bassist locking in, this is where to go. Start with "Good Morning Seoul" with the rapper Nucksal, which won Best Rap & Hip Hop Song at the 2023 Korean Music Awards, then "ENDLESS JUNGLE" (2025), then "cinema paradiso" (2026). Cadejo has had a busy year: an EP with the Japanese band Original Love in April, a track for the Sanulrim 50th-anniversary tribute in July and a new double single on August 29.

If You Want It Rougher: The Volunteers

The Volunteers, Yerin Baek's band, is the furthest from wave to earth on this list, and that is the point. The trio is Yerin Baek on vocals, guitar and keys, Jonny on guitar and Kim Chi-heon on drums, and they release music through peoplelikepeople, Baek's own independent label. Their self-titled debut album came out in May 2021. The sound is guitar rock in the spirit of 1980s and 1990s alternative and grunge, built on power chords, with Baek's airy, bright voice on top. Kwon Ik-do, a selection committee member of the Korean Music Awards, called the opener "Violet" a "rock declaration."

Our take: this is not a sound-alike. It is distorted and riff-driven where wave to earth is soft and jazz-leaning. What links them is a gentle lead voice against the band, a band-first approach on an independent label, and the international audience both have built on large North American tours. If you have played wave to earth all week and want something with more bite, this is the next step.

The timing is good. The band's second full-length, i love u, came out on September 14 with two title tracks, "White Truck" and "RBF." It runs 12 tracks, and the album statement puts the idea in one line: "I wanted to sing fragile words over destructive things." The band calls it their most personal music. They followed it with three nights at Jangchung Arena in Seoul from September 18 to 20. Start with "Violet" (2021), then "Let me go!" (2021), then "White Truck" and "RBF." If you want to go further underground after this, our list of underground Korean bands worth knowing picks up from here, and our guide to Seoul's indie live music shows where these bands play when they are home.