From her early K-pop days to rising to critical acclaim as an independent artist, Lim Kim has rarely taken the easy road to crossover and her newest single finds the art-pop auteur turning an everyday Korean word into a track ready for the runway.
The singer-songwriter released “INSA” on Thursday, July 9, featuring British pop provocateur Bree Runway, as the pre-release buzz single from her forthcoming album Exit to Nowhere. Paired with a visualizer shot in Italy, the duo’s sleek, dance-driven track speaks directly to fans of house and club music while also having broader appeal to pop and K-pop fans.
At the center of the track is the seemingly simple title, “INSA,” which translates to “greeting” or “salutation” in Korean — essentially, the act of acknowledging another through words, a gesture or a formal bow. K-pop fans should be aware of the word as nearly every group has its own insa as a specially choreographed way to introduce themselves to a crowd, typically cued by the leader counting off “one, two” before the members deliver a united greeting that can range from LE SSERAFIM’s simple “Hello, we’re LE SSERAFIM” to harmonizing and making a fake mustache like MAMAMOO.
Lim Kim uses the cultural ritual as a starting point to discuss her experiences with celebrity, public exposure, and anxiety, which began when she competed on the K-pop competition series Superstar K3 as a teen. Co-writing the lyrics, she shares the fatigue of maintaining her professionally confident and glamorous image while feeling emotionally detached inside.
While that introspection could have easily turned itself into a powerhouse ballad, Lim Kim tapped Bree Runway to help turn it into an accessible, floor-ready house production built on the runway-ready, vogue-inspired sound Runway has made her own, from 2022’s “That Girl” to her recent Honey Dijon collaboration “Slight Werk.” It’s a sonic language with deep roots in Black and LGBTQ+ ballroom culture, and threading a distinctly Korean concept through it is the kind of unexpected cross-cultural moment that brings an entirely new shine to the global-pop conversation.
After taking time away from the spotlight herself amid increasingly frustrating label politics, Bree Runway says she connected to the record’s emotional core.
“I was drawn to Lim Kim’s story straight away,” Bree Runway said in a press statement. “The idea of taking time out to recalibrate, reconnect with yourself and come back with a clearer sense of who you are really resonated with me. As artists we’re constantly evolving, and I have a lot of respect for anyone brave enough to carve out their own lane. Beyond that, it’s just a really fun record. I love collaborations that bring different cultures and worlds together, and it feels exciting to be part of something coming out of Korea that has so much energy around it. I’m really happy to be involved and can’t wait for people to hear it this summer.”
According to a press release, Lim Kim said she was a fan of Runway before writing the track and saw her as the ideal partner, both sonically and emotionally — her dance-music instincts suited the song’s energy, as did their shared emotional and professional understanding. Weaving Korean culture through house and voguing — a sound built by and for Black and queer communities — is a bold angle, but also an increasingly viable commercial one. It’s a lane already paying dividends for acts like XLOV, whose album sales and mainstream recognition have climbed sharply in recent months.
“INSA” sets the tone for Lim Kim’s Exit to Nowhere, arriving July 22, and marks the acclaimed star’s first solo music project since 2019’s Generasian, which won Best Dance & Electronic Album at the 2020 Korean Music Awards. Released through Universal Music Korea, Exit to Nowhere is described as “a larger narrative that unfolds across music and visuals, where each chapter brings her closer to clarity, self-understanding, and arrival to ‘now here.’”
Watch the visualizer for Lim Kim and Bree Runway’s “INSA” above.
