From the film that lit the first spark to the new single One More: the story of a Seoul artist who writes in English to say what she wouldn’t say out loud, and who is learning to do everything on her own.
Picture the last semester before graduation. A group of friends goes to a school festival with a clear plan: stay for a bit, then go do something else. An artist takes the stage, then another. At some point, someone in the crowd realizes something she hadn’t seen coming: she should be up there too.
That person is Auve, an indie artist from Seoul who writes, sings and produces. Her stage name is a play on dates. Auve was born in August, and the name comes from “August Vibes.” Her first release is Chapter A, a six-track EP built around the acoustic guitar. In Korea, her distributor points out, indie artists often work without a label behind them. Auve is one of them.
The film that lit the first spark
Her first connection to music is August Rush, the 2007 film. Auve remembers it clearly: “Seeing someone love something that much. I think part of me wanted to love something in that way.” That joy, she says, is still there when she writes. Her relationship with music has become more complicated over the years. But in the moments when melody and lyrics fit together exactly as she imagined, the same happiness she felt as a child comes back.
The festival and the jealousy
Of that night at the festival, Auve remembers the vibe, her group of friends and the complete lack of expectations. She had no intention of getting on a stage. Then, artist after artist, something shifted.
“It wasn’t jealousy like ‘I want to be them.’ It was more like: I should be up there too. I know how much I’d love being on a stage. I have things to show people.” It was almost frustration, she says, as if she was watching instead of doing.
That frustration turned into questions: is this really what I want? Why have I never given music a real chance? What was I afraid of? Auve says it was the first time she admitted to herself how much she wanted to be on stage. Stage Jealousy would later grow out of that experience
The name
“Auve is short for ‘August Vibes.’ I was born in August,” she writes. She adds that August Rush holds a big place in her love for music, so the month already meant something. But it was the mood of August that set the tone: “It’s energetic and full of life, but it also has that summer night feeling, more emotional and dreamy. I love that mix, and it felt just like me.”
It felt just like me. That line ties the name and the record together: an energy that doesn’t fade, with a more melancholic side to it.
Office by day, music by night
A day in Seoul starts at nine and ends at six, with the subway at rush hour. “Not exactly fun,” Auve writes. After dinner there’s a bit of time to unwind, then music picks up again until bedtime: vocal practice, songwriting, music-related content for social media. Then she wakes up and starts again, until the weekend.
Her office job is how Auve makes a living, and it takes up most of her day. Music gets whatever time is left: the evenings, the hours before sleep. Living like this means switching every day from one version of herself to another, and that constant shift has become material for her songs. The anxiety, the longing for something more and the feeling of always being halfway there that run through her music all come from this: two lives running side by side that rarely meet.
“I’ve spent a lot of time feeling the distance between what I have to do and what I want to do. That tension naturally ends up in my music.” Anyone with a job that pays the bills and a passion that needs room (yep, that’s also me!) knows that distance. Auve chose to write about it.
Where One More comes from
One More is the clearest example of that tension. It comes from feeling stuck between the life you already have and the one you still want. The track was released on September 18th on all platforms. Together with Better, it marks the direction of her latest work.
Listeners will find open questions in it: where she wants her life to go, how much more she wants from music, what she’s willing to do for the things she cares about. There’s ambition, but also frustration, passion and the kind of restlessness you feel when you’re young and want more. “I really had fun making it,” Auve says, and you can hear it in the track.
Chapter A, the first chapter
The “A” in Chapter A isn’t the start of a planned series. It marks a first milestone: her first EP, her first step as an artist. Auve hadn’t planned chapters B, C and so on, and doesn’t intend to now.
Her sound has changed since then, and Auve doesn’t feel she has landed on a definitive one yet. “I’m trying different things and expanding what ‘Auve’ can be. My music has already changed a lot since Chapter A, and it will keep changing along with my life.” That’s why she doesn’t want to decide too far ahead what kind of music she’ll make.
Doing it all herself
One of her goals for 2026 was very specific: write and produce at least one song completely on her own, from idea to master. The result is Better. Her previous release had been exhausting. Auve says she felt burned out. She wondered whether she still loved music the way she used to, and whether the acoustic direction was really the right one.
The difference, she says, was this: “Every decision was mine. There was no one telling me whether something was right or wrong, so every sound and every small choice came down to what felt right to me. It was challenging, but also really freeing.” She stopped asking herself what kind of music she should make and started making the music she wanted to make. Better was proof that she could trust herself.
Why English
Auve grew up listening to a lot of English-language pop, so singing and writing in English felt natural. The bigger reason is a different one, though. Talking about her feelings doesn’t come easily. At first, Auve didn’t want family and friends to understand right away what she was thinking through her lyrics. It wasn’t fear of being judged. It was a personal kind of embarrassment.
“Saying something personal in another language made me feel less exposed, and that made it easier to be honest. Writing in English became a way to say things I wouldn’t have said otherwise.”
Family, and worry
The people around her, Auve says, almost always react well: they like that she has found something she loves and is building on it. But the closer people are, the more worried they seem. Especially her family. “They support me, but there’s still an underlying fear when it comes to a career in the arts. Sometimes it feels like that uncertainty scares them more than it scares me. But I understand. For them, supporting me and worrying about me can exist at the same time.”
Insider
Auve doesn’t yet feel able to describe the Korean indie scene as a whole, because she’s still finding her own place in it. She has been invited to some shows and applied for others. Busking, on the other hand, she almost always organizes herself, and she loves it for exactly that reason: you sing for people who have no idea who you are. “There’s something exciting about letting someone hear my voice without any expectations,” she says.
For Auve, being independent mostly means doing everything yourself: the music, and also a long list of decisions that have nothing to do with music. Some days are heavy. But she’s used to making decisions on her own, and that has helped her manage without a label.
The audience Auve is aiming for isn’t only Korean, so social media is essential: “It connects me with people I’d probably never reach through shows in Seoul.” And in Korea’s independent scene, according to Auve, one thing matters more than competition: mutual understanding. “We all know everyone has their own doubts and struggles while trying to make this work. There’s a sense of understanding between us.”
An autobiography in songs
Auve sees her songs as an autobiography. She imagines growing old, listening back to everything she has released and watching her whole life pass by like a panorama. That’s why she writes honestly about whatever she’s going through at the time.
Anxiety, jealousy, hope and all the struggles of your twenties often show up in her songs. But there’s one theme Auve hasn’t fully explored yet: love. Romantic love too, but also love in general: for family, for friends, for a person, for the things you care about. “I think love is at the center of what keeps us going. It’s such a big part of how I see life that I want it to be more present in my music.”
For those discovering her now
If she had to give an Italian reader just one song, Auve would pick One More. “I think it captures a lot of what I’m thinking and feeling right now, both as Auve and as a person outside of music. It still has a lot of open questions about where I want my life to go.”
Those questions are exactly why she recommends it. Auve hopes listeners will find something of themselves in it, even if their lives are far from hers: “I hope they can feel something of themselves in it, even if their life looks completely different from mine.”
For now, Auve is still halfway between the life she has and the life she wants. Days belong to the office, evenings to music, and around her is a family that supports her and worries about her at the same time. The uncertainty is real and she doesn’t hide it, but it seems to scare the people who love her more than it scares her. After Chapter A she wondered whether she still loved music, and Better and One More gave her an answer. Her sound will keep changing, the questions are still open and the independent path is a long one. Stopping, though, is not part of the plan: “I’m letting the next chapters take shape as I live them.”
Three doors towards Auve
One More, the latest single · Better, the first track she wrote and produced on her own · Stage Jealousy, from the EP Chapter A
