The Story
We're two Korean American friends who grew up playing music together. Since 2004 we've traded off guitar, drums, keys, and bass, picking up whatever the song needed, until we could both play just about everything. That gives us two ways to work: we can play every part live on real instruments, or build a track entirely in software with synths, pads, and a lot of layering, depending on what the project needs.
Life took our careers somewhere else. One of us is a physical therapist, the other works in product. The music never went away; it just moved to nights and weekends. Black Jindo is where it lives now: an outlet to keep creating, try sounds we haven't tried yet, and get a little better every time.
The name is a nod to where we come from. The Jindo is a Korean dog, known for being loyal and a little stubborn, which describes a twenty-year friendship pretty well.
What We've Made
And the story behind each one.
Threadbeat Dad
Our friend Crystal Jin Kim, a writer and filmmaker, asked us to write three tracks for her dark comedy short. It premiered as a special presentation at the Atlanta Film Festival in May 2025. See our IMDb credit →
Lo:Fi AM & Lo:Fi PM
We wanted to make music without committing to full five-to-eight-minute songs. So we picked small moments, like early morning, dreaming, and traffic, and gave ourselves about a minute to capture how each one feels. Twelve for the morning, twelve for the night. They were released as NFTs, but really it was an exercise: could we put a feeling into a minute of music?
Musical Escapade
After AM and PM, we wanted to see if all those small ideas could hold up inside a real song. Musical Escapade is our first full-length track, about five minutes, built from the sounds and moments we'd sketched in those one-minute shorts.
Journey
The digital artist Inequity approached us to create a soundscape for Journey, his NFT of a crescent moon over a mountain range. A short piece, about a minute and a quarter, made to sit underneath the visuals.