Popo (2022)

This is the lightest thing in her 2022 catalog and it earns that lightness without apology. The production bounces gently — soft percussion, bright guitar plucks, a bassline that practically hums with contentment — and the arrangement has a handmade warmth, like something recorded in a sunlit room with the window open. Baek's vocal here is playful, almost conversational, stripped of the introspective weight that characterizes much of her work. The syllables of the title are themselves a small act of joy, onomatopoeic and childlike in the best possible sense. Emotionally the song exists in a specific register: early-stage affection, the phase before complexity arrives, when another person is simply delightful and you haven't yet learned to be careful around them. It does not romanticize that feeling so much as document it with precision — the giddiness, the slight absurdity, the way desire at this stage feels like a game you're both winning. In the context of Korean indie-pop, which tends toward introspection and melancholy, this track is a deliberate pivot, evidence that Baek's range extends to joy done with sophistication. Play it in morning light, on the first warm day of spring, or anytime you want music that simply feels good to inhabit.