YOUNG POSSE · RaeRae Reacts
kawa: Doeun and Jiana Made the Side Quest Feel Like the Main Save File
A breakup spiral filmed by the girls who wrote it, composed it, shot it, directed it, edited it, and apparently decided sleep was optional.
“kawa” is what happens when Doeun and Jiana stop performing somebody else’s heartbreak concept and make their own weird, low-budget, emotionally sticky little movie. It is not polished into death. That is the charm.
Artists: Doeun and Jiana of YOUNG POSSE
Lyrics: Doeun, Jiana
Composition: KIGGEN, Doeun, Jiana
Arrangement: KIGGEN
Video: directed, edited, and VFX by Doeun; shot by Doeun and Jiana
Project: young tape
The official video
My actual first reaction
First thought: Wait. Doeun directed this herself? Now the awkward angles feel like handwriting instead of a budget problem.
Sound check: Late-night R&B haze, clipped drums, a hook built around “thinkin’ about you,” and two girls who sound annoyed that missing somebody has become a full-time job.
The moment I leaned in: “Thinkin’ about ㅠ.” Turning the Korean crying emoticon into the end of an English phrase is stupidly simple and annoyingly good.
The side-eye: Some English phrasing is rough. I would rather hear their rough sentence than a committee-approved line nobody remembers.
Current status: Added. This is the song for checking an ex’s page and then acting shocked when your own evening is ruined.
What the song means
The relationship is over, but the brain missed the meeting. Doeun opens by repeating that she does not want to lose her mind while immediately listing all the ways this man has moved into it rent-free. Time did not heal the heart. His goodbye felt colder than the night. She dreams the breakup again, asks him to answer the phone, suspects another woman, and knows she is walking into the same trap.
Jiana is not calmer. She wants the truth, calls him rude, says she is finished, then asks him to come back in practically the same breath. That contradiction is the song. “kawa” does not give us a clean empowerment arc where the second chorus discovers self-respect. It gives us the uglier hour: you know he is bad for you, you know he is probably lying, and you still miss the smell of him when somebody passes on the street.
The hook’s trick is “Thinkin’ about ㅠ.” The character ㅠ resembles tears in Korean text language. The line reads like “thinking about you” and “thinking about crying” at once. It is internet shorthand doing actual emotional work instead of being thrown into lyrics because somebody learned what a meme is.
The review: small room, real fingerprints
KIGGEN keeps the instrumental spare enough for the voices to feel close. The track does not need a giant vocal climax because obsession rarely arrives as one dramatic speech. It repeats. It checks. It reopens the last message. The beat circles while Doeun and Jiana trade details, and the repetition becomes the behavior being described.
Doeun’s delivery is direct and slightly dry; she sounds like she is trying to report the facts while the facts keep embarrassing her. Jiana adds more melodic ache. Together they make a useful push and pull: one voice inventories the damage, the other lets it hurt.
The best reason to care is authorship. Both members wrote lyrics and share composition credit. Doeun directed, edited, and handled the VFX. Both shot the footage. In an industry where “personal” can mean an idol selected one of three approved nail colors, this is personal in a measurable way. You can point to the sentences, the camera, the cuts, and say: their hands were here.
The video: memory filmed like evidence
The homemade scale fits a song about being stuck inside private memories. Instead of a million-dollar heartbreak mansion, we get locations and frames that feel reachable. The camera is not a silent professional observer. It is another object the girls pass between them. That changes the mood: we are not watching characters designed by an outside director; we are watching Doeun and Jiana decide how their own sadness should look.
The edits and VFX carry the restless brain. Images feel collected, replayed, and slightly damaged, the way old photos become dangerous after midnight. The visual does not explain a tidy plot because the lyrics already tell us there is no tidy ending. They are trapped in the last text, the familiar station, the old neighborhood, the teddy bear beside the bed.
Easter eggs and details worth keeping
- ㅠ is doing double duty. It completes the sound of “you” while drawing crying eyes.
- The familiar station matters. Doeun gets off where memory can hit her physically; place becomes part of the breakup loop.
- The teddy bear is not cute decoration. It is the substitute body she holds while wishing the actual person were there.
- The final text is a prison. Jiana says she lives trapped inside it—a painfully current way to describe rereading a relationship after it has ended.
- The credits are the biggest reveal. This is not a company pretending an official MV is casual. The members literally made it.
Final take
“kawa” is not the loudest thing on young tape, but it may be the project’s clearest proof of purpose. A mixtape should let artists try a thought without forcing it through title-track machinery. Doeun and Jiana use that freedom to make a sad, slightly messy song where the language belongs to people their age and the video looks like something they wanted to touch.
I do not need every line polished. I need to believe the person singing thought it. Here, I do.
Sources
YOUNG POSSE · RaeRae Reacts
kawa: Doeun and Jiana Made the Side Quest Feel Like the Main Save File
A breakup spiral filmed by the girls who wrote it, composed it, shot it, directed it, edited it, and apparently decided sleep was optional.
“kawa” is what happens when Doeun and Jiana stop performing somebody else’s heartbreak concept and make their own weird, low-budget, emotionally sticky little movie. It is not polished into death. That is the charm.
Artists: Doeun and Jiana of YOUNG POSSE
Lyrics: Doeun, Jiana
Composition: KIGGEN, Doeun, Jiana
Arrangement: KIGGEN
Video: directed, edited, and VFX by Doeun; shot by Doeun and Jiana
Project: young tape
The official video
My actual first reaction
First thought: Wait. Doeun directed this herself? Now the awkward angles feel like handwriting instead of a budget problem.
Sound check: Late-night R&B haze, clipped drums, a hook built around “thinkin’ about you,” and two girls who sound annoyed that missing somebody has become a full-time job.
The moment I leaned in: “Thinkin’ about ㅠ.” Turning the Korean crying emoticon into the end of an English phrase is stupidly simple and annoyingly good.
The side-eye: Some English phrasing is rough. I would rather hear their rough sentence than a committee-approved line nobody remembers.
Current status: Added. This is the song for checking an ex’s page and then acting shocked when your own evening is ruined.
What the song means
The relationship is over, but the brain missed the meeting. Doeun opens by repeating that she does not want to lose her mind while immediately listing all the ways this man has moved into it rent-free. Time did not heal the heart. His goodbye felt colder than the night. She dreams the breakup again, asks him to answer the phone, suspects another woman, and knows she is walking into the same trap.
Jiana is not calmer. She wants the truth, calls him rude, says she is finished, then asks him to come back in practically the same breath. That contradiction is the song. “kawa” does not give us a clean empowerment arc where the second chorus discovers self-respect. It gives us the uglier hour: you know he is bad for you, you know he is probably lying, and you still miss the smell of him when somebody passes on the street.
The hook’s trick is “Thinkin’ about ㅠ.” The character ㅠ resembles tears in Korean text language. The line reads like “thinking about you” and “thinking about crying” at once. It is internet shorthand doing actual emotional work instead of being thrown into lyrics because somebody learned what a meme is.
The review: small room, real fingerprints
KIGGEN keeps the instrumental spare enough for the voices to feel close. The track does not need a giant vocal climax because obsession rarely arrives as one dramatic speech. It repeats. It checks. It reopens the last message. The beat circles while Doeun and Jiana trade details, and the repetition becomes the behavior being described.
Doeun’s delivery is direct and slightly dry; she sounds like she is trying to report the facts while the facts keep embarrassing her. Jiana adds more melodic ache. Together they make a useful push and pull: one voice inventories the damage, the other lets it hurt.
The best reason to care is authorship. Both members wrote lyrics and share composition credit. Doeun directed, edited, and handled the VFX. Both shot the footage. In an industry where “personal” can mean an idol selected one of three approved nail colors, this is personal in a measurable way. You can point to the sentences, the camera, the cuts, and say: their hands were here.
The video: memory filmed like evidence
The homemade scale fits a song about being stuck inside private memories. Instead of a million-dollar heartbreak mansion, we get locations and frames that feel reachable. The camera is not a silent professional observer. It is another object the girls pass between them. That changes the mood: we are not watching characters designed by an outside director; we are watching Doeun and Jiana decide how their own sadness should look.
The edits and VFX carry the restless brain. Images feel collected, replayed, and slightly damaged, the way old photos become dangerous after midnight. The visual does not explain a tidy plot because the lyrics already tell us there is no tidy ending. They are trapped in the last text, the familiar station, the old neighborhood, the teddy bear beside the bed.
Easter eggs and details worth keeping
- ㅠ is doing double duty. It completes the sound of “you” while drawing crying eyes.
- The familiar station matters. Doeun gets off where memory can hit her physically; place becomes part of the breakup loop.
- The teddy bear is not cute decoration. It is the substitute body she holds while wishing the actual person were there.
- The final text is a prison. Jiana says she lives trapped inside it—a painfully current way to describe rereading a relationship after it has ended.
- The credits are the biggest reveal. This is not a company pretending an official MV is casual. The members literally made it.
Final Rae take
“kawa” is not the loudest thing on young tape, but it may be the project’s clearest proof of purpose. A mixtape should let artists try a thought without forcing it through title-track machinery. Doeun and Jiana use that freedom to make a sad, slightly messy song where the language belongs to people their age and the video looks like something they wanted to touch.
I do not need every line polished. I need to believe the person singing thought it. Here, I do.