Dreamcatcher Reveals New Music As Holidays Approach

Normally, around the holidays, K-Pop groups are intensely busy with a variety of holiday-related and end-of-year focused activities, whether that is award shows or performances or specials. And while Dreamcatcher has deviated from being terribly busy during the Christmas holiday at times, for the most part, Dreamcatcher has taken it easy.

Yet this year seems to herald back to times like 2019, when they landed from their US tour to do activities at the COEX Winter Festival, or even last year, when a late 2nd comeback took their schedules close to the latter portion of the month. This, to be clear, seems to be their choice - Dreamcatcher (leader JiU specifically) has wanted holiday-related activities ever since things kicked off the year, and there was a sense of anticipation and excitement from them surrounding those activities. This past week, we found out exactly why, so let's get into the latest!

We're starting to see US tour Dreamcatcher's Notes come out, and while these were expected I've always enjoyed finding out more about what happened behind the scenes or in the leadup to showtime. There's always a fun highlight or two, and this time around, it was quite easily the whole set of Siyeon and Handong interactions where they decided to re-create a Chinese martial arts drama, complete with planning, filming, and even a death scene. The hamming it up and laughing while putting everything together reminded me of Dreamcatcher's World of The Married drama parody and it just goes to show that if they wanted to or had time for it, that they could go back to their self-made MV ways.

Other than this I did enjoy the group's reactions to fans' dedication and their behavior during the show, and especially SuA's mentioning of the fact that Chicago in particular was pretty keen on wanting to do as many "Silent Night" repeats as possible. It got to the point where SuA was "calming down" the audience and as someone who was there, it made me laugh as much as it did the members, so it was nice to hear a bit more about it.

Speaking of tours, we found out a little bit more detail about Dreamcatcher's upcoming return to Australia in 2025. The ticket benefits and tier levels were published by local organizer BoxLiveAU, and include a variety of possibilities for the top two tiers. We don't appear to be seeing an exact replication of prior benefits from this year's other tours, but this appears to be in-line with the tour stops this year that have relied more (or entirely) on local organizers to work with the group and company. The key difference here is the presence of a lucky draw for Polaroid selfies for a limited number of SVIP-level fans and the presence of Printer Signature Photocards. Pricing has yet to be released, but will likely be seen ahead of the on-sale date on the 13th, so travelers and Oceania Somnia, hopefully you're ready!

In more immediate plans, however, Dreamcatcher fans got confirmation of what may have been suspected based on recent Dreamcatcher member comments, and that's the fact that we're getting to see new music for the 2nd time this year. The sudden drop of the now-traditional Mystery Code this past week delighted and excited fans, and as usual, it was solved fairly quickly. A Caesar Cipher of 7 helped decode the crossword clues from the Christmas-themed envelope, and the words included showed both words from the potential title and a release date - December 20th. Not surprisingly, this is just in time for Dreamcatcher's Christmas concert series and is highly likely to be performed live.

The words in the crossword-themed Mystery Code ended up being put together to display the title track for this Special Digital Single release - "My Christmas Sweet Love", revealed when the Track List dropped for it not a day later. The holiday sweaters and themes seem to show that this is going to be more of a lighter song, appropriate for the holiday season and involving electric piano, given the description.

It was already great to see the news of Dreamcatcher music, but the bonus of also getting two well-known B-sides, 2020's "Jazz Bar" and 2018's "Wonderland" is just the holiday cherry (hot chocolate whipped cream? cinnamon spice? you get the idea) on top. Fans were quick to point out that this would serve as a studio quality version of "Jazz Bar" that included Dreamcatcher member Handong, whose absence due to participation in the Chinese survival show Youth With You Season 2 prevented her from recording with everyone else. Either way, the consistency with which Dreamcatcher has been delivering music at least twice a year will continue, even if this release does not have formal promotion schedules due to its closeness to the end of the year.

The last surprise for this past week with regards to Dreamcatcher's holiday plans was the fact that even though this would be a Special Holiday Single, that there would be at least one album version associated with it. The presence of a POCA album, a smaller version of an album including only minimal inclusions and no CD media, was one that I wasn't expecting, as most of the Special Single releases have been all-digital with no purchasable physical component (2018's "Full Moon", 2020's "R.o.S.E BLUE", and 2023's "REASON" come to mind).

For those who are looking to collect another piece of Dreamcatcher discography history along with photocards, this was nice to hear, and the fact that the chance to win a longer-than-normal, 2.5 minute video fancall through Makestar just sweetens the deal. We'll likely have to wait until 2025 to find out how much this might add to Dreamcatcher's overall sales total for 2024, but it obviously can't hurt to have one more opportunity to support the group financially. Regardless, there's lots to look forward to as 2024 comes to a close.

Will we see more holiday surprises from Dreamcatcher in the coming weeks? Only the group and the company know, but no matter what, you can always count on me to report the latest and greatest from the group, so for all that and more, I'll see you here next Sunday!

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