Samuel Joseph Kim

For my final release of 2025, I have a new single, "Layered Hope."

It's been a hard year to process. I turn 50 today, and I wanted this milestone year to be something creatively significant, but I just didn't have the energy within me to do what I originally thought I would do. I did end up producing 5 releases for 50, which is no small thing. At the beginning of the year, I thought I would do so much, but it has been hard navigating this year as my sister battles with leukemia. The relentless chaos and upheaval in the world and the country where I live also bear heavily on my mind daily.

This single may turn into an album one day (or it may not), but the steady inspiration behind this single was remembering Emily Dickinson's, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers." The other song, "Reflection," is another ode to my love of shoegaze and dreampop in its ability to take us somewhere far and beautiful through its cacophonous veil of distortion and reverberation. For the first time, I've decided not to make the lyrics available, because these songs are much more than words being sung. It's an honest call into the dark for some light to come forth..

Link in bio.

The poem by Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

My view from the stage…