Singer-songwriter Kim Seok-jun released a new single "Window screen" featuring Cha Eun-ju.
Kim Seok-jun released "Window screen (feat. Cha Eun-ju)" at noon on the 31st across various music streaming sites. It came a month after he released the neo-folk digital single "Love letter (feat. Cat Wave)" on the 30th of last month.
"Love letter (feat. Cat Wave)" is a new song released about a year after the 2025 regular album "POP". Kim Seok-jun plans to start from this and release one song each month for a year, for a total of 12 songs.
After winning the gold prize at the 1993 Yoo Jae-ha music festival, Kim Seok-jun participated as a collaborator in several projects of Hana Music led by Cho Dong-jin. He temporarily suspended his activities as a singer after 1999, returned to popular music in 2020—21 years later—by releasing a single and an album, and has continued steady creative work since then.
"Window screen (feat. Cha Eun-ju)" is a song Kim Seok-jun completed after being inspired by streets he often passes. Once a bustling street, it has declined and is now sparsely populated even during the day and dimly lit at night; he expressed in music the reflections he had while walking and running through that space and looking back on himself.
The song is a jazz ballad based on a simple four-beat rhythm made up of drums, bass, guitar and piano, and it adds a flute—relatively uncommon in jazz—to the familiar arrangement to attempt an emotional expression. Featured singer Cha Eun-ju brought the song's mood to life with a restrained vocal that does not overly display emotion, completing the ballad color Kim Seok-jun intended.
Cha Eun-ju began musically in the highly regarded 1990s jazz vocal group The Strange People and has pursued diverse musical activities across jazz, pop and rock. This is her third time participating as a featured vocalist on Kim Seok-jun's music. On the 6th she released her own single "Regret becomes longing" and plans to continue stage activities.
Longtime musical colleagues also contributed to this single. Shin Seok-cheol (drums), Kim Jun-o (guitar), Lee Dong-min (contrabass) and Jung Kwan-young (piano) participated as performers and matched musical chemistry with Kim Seok-jun. Park Yong-jun (piano) of The Classic, as well as Lee Seong-ryeol (guitar) and Kim Jeong-uk (bass), are also supporting Kim Seok-jun's musical work that will continue this year. Eun Hye-in, who studied at the Detmold University of Music in Germany, participated on flute.
Since releasing the 2025 regular album "POP," Kim Seok-jun has worked on numerous songs and plans to release those works sequentially through this one-year monthly new song project. The track "Like a book that saw the back page first" from HYNN (Park Hye-won)'s new album "Summer feeling," released on the 13th, is also a song composed by Kim Seok-jun.
For this project, he plans to present various genres including fusion and trot, in addition to the already released folk "Love letter (feat. Cat Wave)" and jazz "Window screen (feat. Cha Eun-ju)." Interest is growing in what new forms Kim Seok-jun's musical experiments, which do not stay in one genre, will take each month.
[Photo] Kim Seok-jun
[OSEN]