After dominating Korean charts with his soundtracks, Kang Dae-ho arrives at Milan Fashion Week. The musician is among the headliners of Milan Loves Seoul, the event exploring the bond between Korean creativity and Milanese runways.
If you have watched a k-drama in, let’s say, the last five years, you have undoubtedly heard Gaho’s voice. In South Korea, Kang Dae-ho (born 1997) is what industry insiders define as a “cultural asset”: a musician capable of shifting the weight of a television production through his presence on a soundtrack alone. That said, the artist—who will soon land in Milan for Fashion Week 2026—is not (only) the singer of reassuring ballads that the public expects. He is a musician who has just finished shedding his skin, dissolving decade-long ties with his long-standing label to be reborn in a rawer, more autonomous dimension.
What singing an OST means in Korea
To better understand Gaho’s history within the industry, one must understand the Korean Original Soundtrack (OST) market. Unlike the Western industry, where a soundtrack is most likely a secondary background element, in Korea, songs written for dramas are marketing pillars that consistently occupy the top positions on the charts.
In 2020, the song Start Over, the theme for Itaewon Class, turned Gaho into an institution. The track remained at number one on the Gaon Digital Chart for weeks and won Best OST at the Mnet Asian Music Awards. Since then, Gaho has become the industry benchmark, lending his voice to subsequent hits such as Start-Up (with the song Running) and, more recently, King the Land (with Yellow Light).
This monumental success created a paradox: Gaho spent years interpreting the feelings of other characters, becoming—by his own words—”an actor who uses his voice” to serve narratives that were not his own. It is a role that, however lucrative, eventually saturated the musician’s creative space, pushing him toward a necessary break.
The Gaho we will see in Milan between February 27 and March 2 is, therefore, a revived artist, emerging from a transition that was both contractual and tied to his identity. This new path explains the long solo recording silence following the release of the EP Diamond in March 2023: a period of absence from the scene (unrelated to TV series) that served to manage the end of the Planetarium Records era in November 2025 and to build the foundations of his own PLAN-G Entertainment.
During this interval, Gaho chose to restart from his home studio, where he personally writes, arranges, and mixes every track, reclaiming total control over his production and the stories he brings to life with his voice.
KAVE: a bassless revolution
The signs of this impatience with traditional canons had already emerged in July 2024, well before the official departure from his long-standing label. On that date, Gaho’s career ceased to be an exclusively solo path: with the debut of KAVE, the artist formalized the rock lineup created alongside his childhood friends, the same musicians who had accompanied him live for years. The name is an acronym for Kings Always Have Veiled Egos, a title that immediately signals a change in perspective: it is no longer the solo performer occupying the stage, but a collective where the frontman’s ego is placed at the service of a shared sound.
For Gaho, this was not a deviation, but a return to the band dimension he had previously explored in his early days with the AlphaDict collective. In KAVE, the clean aesthetic of soundtracks is replaced by a blend of rock, electronica, and r&b that is much denser and more experimental. The catch? The band does not have a bassist. Low frequencies are entrusted to a wall of synthesizers and industrial samples managed by Ownr, the keyboardist and DJ, creating a hybrid sound that oscillates between metal and distorted electronica.
Tracks like Stone or YOU present us with a brand-new, grittier Gaho, who employs a raspy and rawer register, moving a step away from the falsetto that made him famous. In these songs, the voice no longer serves to please the listener but to drive the band’s energy: Gaho alternates clean passages with a rock aggressiveness that dismantles his polished image as a ballad singer, showcasing a fuller, liberated versatility.
Get to know Gaho: 4 songs
- Stay Here (2018): voice and piano. This is the track Gaho still uses to introduce and identify himself, which is hardly surprising. An otherworldly vocal performance resting on a melody that delivers wild chills. Unrivaled and unreachable.
- Pink Walk (2019): here, a sassy attitude and a soul groove emerge, proving how naturally Gaho moves outside the boundaries of ballads. It is a stylish, rhythmic track that plays with a much more relaxed and sexy vocal delivery
- Right Now (2021): the title track of the Fireworks album, this is an high-intensity orchestral pop piece built to explode into a cinematic chorus that feels written for a major festival finale. Here, Gaho pursues power through a massive arrangement, using violins and electric guitars to make the “fireworks” within the lyrics erupt, marking a transition toward more ambitious and personal songwriting.
- Stone (with KAVE, 2024): now we enter the territory of industrial noise, distortion, controlled rage. This track smells like artistic independence; the transition to a band dimension doesn’t overshadow his exceptional vocal qualities.
When Gaho arrives in Milan for Milan Loves Seoul between February 27 and March 2, he will bring the full weight of his career with him. From the orchestral ballads that made him a celebrity to the new rock phase of KAVE, the Milanese event will represent his first European stage to showcase his new professional autonomy.
The show on March 1st at Via Valtellina 21 (click here for tickets), organized in collaboration with Samsung, will be the moment when the Italian public can witness firsthand how these two souls coexist, experiencing the definitive form of Kang Dae-ho’s independence. See you there!
