Inside Tomorrow X Together’s New Collaboration With The Jonas Brothers

Growing up, HueningKai — now a member of the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together, or TXT — couldn’t have imagined he’d one day release a song with three of his musical heroes. “Camp Rock was one of my favorite movies when I was younger,” HueningKai tells Bustle of the Disney Channel classic, which memorably stars the Jonas Brothers as a trio of musicians and reluctant summer camp attendees. “I dreamt of becoming a singer myself while watching it.” But thanks to TXT’s new collaboration with the Jo Bros, HueningKai accomplished just that.

When the members of TXT — Soobin, HueningKai, Taehyun, Yeonjun, and Beomgyu — heard the first demo of what would become “Do It Like That,” they immediately thought of reaching out to the Jonas Brothers. “We felt like Jonas Brothers and their smooth vocals would be the icing on the cake to bring out the fun and breezy vibes of the track,” Taehyun says. Thankfully, the American group was, per Soobin, “very much on board” with the partnership, and the two bands ended up meeting in New York in May. Yeonjun admits he was a bit starstruck: “I [listened] to a lot of their music, so meeting them in the flesh was a surreal experience for me.”

After weeks of teasing the song on social media and recreating viral TikTok videos together, on July 7, the groups finally released “Do It Like That.” And it’s a bop. The groovy, upbeat track plays into both bands’ upbeat, pop sensibilities, and effortlessly harmonizes their smooth falsettos. The stripped-down video, meanwhile, featured both bands grooving to the song in retro-inspired suits. “It’s the most fun I’ve had on a music video set in a while,” says Beomgyu.

That the single is already poised to be a summer anthem is hardly surprising, given both bands’ bonafides. The Jonas Brothers have been at the pop game on and off since 2005, with 26 songs landing on the Billboard 100 list. And after their 2019 debut, TXT quickly became one of the world’s biggest fourth-generation K-pop acts, capturing the hearts of Gen Z in particular. (The group has amassed over 20 million followers on TikTok and another 14 on Instagram, and their 2022 EP, minisode 2: Thursday’s Child, even debuted at No.4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.)

This collab marks another milestone in the K-pop quintet’s already impressive run. Since their debut full studio album The Dream Chapter: Magic, TXT has dipped into different genres, constantly challenging themselves musically. Taehyun points to the song “Tinnitus (Wanna be a rock),” from their fifth Korean-language EP, The Name Chapter: Temptation, as an example of the group’s willingness to venture out of their comfort zone. The single “features a genre and a certain groove that we hadn’t tried yet, so I think it was able to portray our artistic growth and versatility,” he says.

Though their world tour, “ACT: Sweet Mirage,” is already well underway after kicking off in March, TXT still has a ton to look forward to this summer. At the end of the month, the group is dropping a documentary on Disney + titled Tomorrow X Together: Our Lost Summer, and just one week later, they’ll be making history as the first-ever Korean band to headline Lollapalooza. Beomgyu is already anticipating how the group’s fans — known as “the MOA” — will “dance along and enjoy with us” at the Chicago festival.