Dami Waves The Chequered Flag With Yoohyeon's Help As Dreamcatcher's Solo Projects Continue

One thing that I think can kind of sting in a K-Pop group's post-exclusive contract era is the waiting. As various members, subunits, and eventually, the group creates their next projects, there's a lot of waiting around, especially when there's a bit of uncertainty around what is coming up next.

Dreamcatcher has been no exception to this rule. While there were certainly expected activities from the original announcement in March regarding contracts, such as JiU, SuA, and Yoohyeon forming a subunit or Siyeon debuting her band, other prospects weren't so clear. Yet I've always been a bit of an optimist, in that we'd eventually hear from everyone else (Handong, Dami, and Gahyun) as well. Sometimes these projects give you little teases and eventually give you something, like how Handong's first post-DCC contract single "Fairy" did, or you can see little hints of small projects, like Gahyun's appearances on friends' YouTube channels and shows or invites to fashion events. But others simply hit you out of nowhere, and that's what Dami did (much to the delight of Dreamcatcher fans waiting for her first bit of work to come out).

We'll get to Dami's new single in a bit, but here's what we've seen from Dreamcatcher as a whole as October came to a close!

UAU's Play series has been working its way slowly through the North and South American tour from the summer, and we saw the finale get posted recently. Out of all the behind-the-scenes content, I tend to enjoy tour stuff the most, in part because of the travel and tour-exclusive stories. This time around it was SuA's quest to get JiU to wear the penalty suit for losing out on the tour's UAU x InSomnia games along with Yoohyeon having to sidestep someone looking to get to know her better. The former ended up with SuA failing and also having to wear the penalty Hulk inflatable suit for her trouble, and the latter had Yoohyeon successfully discouraging her would-be suitor. On a side note - seriously, to all the folks out there looking to slide into someone's social media DMs, if you strike out the first time, I'd move on rather than swing for the fences another way.

As far as successfully getting peoples' attention, Handong continues to do that with small teases from her upcoming work, including a few posts on her official Handong Studio Weibo of her during downtime (implying plots as only Dreamcatcher's resident 1st Cat can do) as well as in studio and in the practice room. The videos and pictures have ranged to the cheeky and funny, like the above, to those that have a bunch of that Handong swagger, like a short showing off some of her dance moves. There's still a lot of mystery surrounding Handong's latest music release, so the hope is we'll see something before the end of the year for sure.

Yet for all of UAU and Handong's traditional slow build-up to new music, sometimes it pays to throw a curveball, and that's exactly what Dreamcatcher Main Rapper did with an accelerated bomb of a schedule leading up to her 1st single, titled "Chequered Flag". We've heard about the little hints here and there on Dami's Bubble account, or in the occasional Instagram live, but dropping an official YouTube channel and enigmatic teaser for her 1st single release post-DCC hit suddenly and created plenty of buzz among Dreamcatcher fans, as it should have.

The date and background music being the only things that gave us the news were enough for fans to anticipate what Dami was finally looking to release, but she wasn't done yet. Speedrunning the entirety of the slow drip marketing that has been known to inhabit K-Pop spaces, Dami put up the track list (in which it was revealed that she'd be featuring fellow Dreamcatcher Yoohyeon on the track as well as herself), a ton of concept photos that placed her in rugged, yet somehow still fashionable clothes in a garage and shipping port setting, and even a teaser - all in less than a week.

I think running things this way was both unique but also practical, as has been the case from what we've seen of Dami in front of the camera for eight years. She was quick to point out that due to the highly independent nature of her work (and that she had to do a lot of it herself), there would be no music video, but that if she had one, it'd be one inspired by F1 racing, which served as the inspiration for her first single release. Knowing how fleeting K-Pop fans (even Dreamcatcher ones) can be, she caught and held the attention of those anticipating her work long enough to get them to tune in on release day. With no ability to promote on shows or make the usual rounds of variety appearances, Dami seemed to know she had a short window to capitalize, and took it.

The result was pretty darned good insofar as Dreamcatcher fans' impressions overall were. Fans have known Dreamcatcher's Main Rapper's appeal to a not-insignificant amount of those who list her as their bias is the swagger and badassery she brings to her parts in Dreamcatcher songs. Many of the iconic moments in many of their videos, from twirling a baton in "YOU AND I" to knowing, by line ("hold up/I'm a geek the big paradox") and by visual, when her part in "BOCA" is coming, to when she's saluting in "VISION", and much more, are Dami's. That's the kind of energy that came to "Chequered Flag", a hard-charging, electronica/dubstep mix of a song that features both Dami's vocals and rap contrasting with Yoohyeon's lighter singing voice. It immediately joins a ton of other high-energy songs on my workout playlist, and I don't doubt that I'm the only Dreamcatcher fan who thought this way on listening to how hard the song went from beginning to end.

The thing is, I watched a lot of the anticipatory discussion about what kind of song "Chequered Flag" would be, and even after hearing the teasers, I don't know that people quite pinpointed what genre it would fall under. For my part, I chose to stay away from the speculation and be pleasantly surprised - the reason being that looking back at the small history of Dami-composed and involved Dreamcatcher songs, she has always possessed range and variance. She's done short rap, emotional ballad, feelgood pop, and 00's punk rock, occasionally reminding people over the course of the tenure of Dreamcatcher's career that she can do more than just blow people away with powerful rapping. So for her to release something with a viciously catchy beat drop that you might hear in a club, gaming event, or as someone's entrance theme walking onto the stage isn't out of her wheelhouse. Sure, it may not have the numbers that a soloist with more resources might end up making, but I imagine putting it out there is not just the result of wanting to share her creative effort with the world but also as an audio calling card to anyone interested in picking up a young producer with some raw talent that can be honed.

For now, we're seeing Dami hard at work getting the message out there about her song any way she can (with, of course, the full support of her fellow Dreamcatcher members and with Dreamcatcher Company's reach), and these little independently created small videos and shorts are helping keep the song out there. For my part, I'll be keeping it on my playlist and a part of my rotation for a long time to come, and I hope everyone else does as well, as it's only encouragement to everyone else in Dreamcatcher as they pursue their own projects and keep working to put them out there for the general public to see. When those happen, you can always count on me for reporting on the latest from the group, so for all that and more, I'll see you here next time!