Discover DeVita: How the Indie Sensation’s New Album Explores Personal Struggles and Spirituality

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[MyDaily = Reporter Seung-gil Lee] Kakao Entertainment’s music platform Melon has named singer-songwriter DeVita its May Artist of the Month for TrackZero, the platform’s indie-music initiative, and published an in-depth interview to mark the release of her first full-length album, The Tree Is Burning.

TrackZero is Melon’s program for spotlighting indie music, introducing hidden gems and emerging artists to listeners through playlists curated by an expert panel. This month the project focuses on DeVita, a singer-songwriter who has carved out a distinctive space in Korea’s indie scene by blending R&B, pop and baroque elements.

DeVita says the March release “transforms a deeply personal narrative into music.” She translated episodes of depersonalization, panic disorder and a near-death experience into songs that trace a journey from darkness to light. “I didn’t set out with a plan to make this album,” she said. “I followed a feeling I was living through, and the music emerged. The process of living that feeling became the album.”

The record unfolds in three stages—sin, an encounter with God, and enlightenment. The opening track, “Judas Reborn,” uses a blazing flame to evoke divine wrath; the closing track, “Hallelujah,” answers with rain that signifies divine mercy. The sixth track, “Changes,” carries what DeVita describes as a message from God and marks the album’s turn from confusion to revelation. The cover, an homage to Ilya Repin’s 1885 painting Judas, depicts DeVita trembling before God and then realizing God’s love, breaking into a smile.

TrackZero presents DeVita as “an artist who transforms intensely personal narratives into the universal language of myth and classical forms, inviting listeners to experience them as their own,” and spotlights this album for that reason.

In the Melon Magazine interview, DeVita described her musical approach in detail. She said she didn’t consciously borrow church modes; rather, she introduced Baroque touches within familiar tonal frameworks to balance the familiar with the new. She finds fascination in how the same chord can change color depending on piano voicing, and—working with producers Taerim and Sogong—she translated those classical techniques into modern production.

Religious symbolism and a carefully constructed visual world run throughout the album: the tricycle in “Tricycle” stands in for the Trinity, and the apple tree in “Sailing” invokes the concept of felix culpa, the “fortunate fall.” DeVita said she aimed to build a worldview that is accessible to listeners without religious affiliation as well as to those of different faiths. Explaining her use of mythic figures such as Icarus and Judas, she added, “When you can’t understand yourself, you express yourself through figures from myth and fairy tale.”

TrackZero also released a curator-selected playlist of DeVita’s recommended tracks. It includes selections from The Tree Is Burning alongside other songs that illuminate the range of her musical world.

Melon launched TrackZero in April 2022 and has featured it on the mobile app’s main screen on Thursdays ever since. Each month the program names an Artist of the Month and selects recommended new songs. The Artist of the Month is chosen from artists who have released music domestically, and the recommended tracks are selected from songs released within the past three to four months.

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