Seoul, KR · punk

Sailor Honeymoon

2 festivals played ↓

Seoul garage-punk cool — bratty hooks with art-scene bite, international underground buzz well earned, the city's coolest new export.

Sailor Honeymoon formed in Seoul in 2022 after drummer Abi Raymaker and guitarist Zaeeun Shin met at the venue Senggi Studio, where Abi was working on a video project and Zaeeun was DJing. They built the band's early songs by improvising alongside members of other local acts before settling into a fixed lineup with bassist Kim Yerim.

Their songs are short and scrappy, built on distorted guitar, simple basslines and shouted group vocals delivered in a mix of Korean and English, closer in spirit to first-wave punk and 1960s garage than to anything polished. Lyrics take on subjects like patriarchy, periods and difficult friendships, though NME noted the band handles them with humour rather than solemnity.

The band released its first single, Cockroach, in 2023, followed by Bad Apple in January 2024, which the group described as being about realising a friend holds bigoted views. Their self-titled EP arrived that April.

Zaeeun also plays in the band Gyojung, and Abi in Deadbeat Club, alongside earlier Sailor Honeymoon bassists Meaningful Stone, HUNJIYA and Mio Si before Kim Yerim joined. The band's recordings have circulated internationally through the DIY punk network rather than through the Korean mainstream, backed by a deliberately amateurish, high-energy live approach.

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