Carina Nebula (카리나 네뷸라) is a South Korean jazz vocal quartet of four women who had all worked as solo singers before they sang together: Malo (말로), the leader and music director, Park Raon (박라온), Kim Min Hee (김민희) and Kang Yun-mi (강윤미). The group prints its name in Latin letters as Carina Nebula on its album cover, on Apple Music and in its label's text, and Korean listings add the Hangul 카리나 네뷸라. Its first album, Good Match (JNH Music, April 27, 2023), was nominated for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 21st Korean Music Awards, and the group was one of six nominees for Musician of the Year at the same ceremony, held on February 29, 2024. The Best Jazz Vocal Album prize went to Yujin Kim's Extraordinary, and the Musician of the Year prize went to Silica Gel. The members' own profiles tell the stories of their solo careers; what follows is about the four of them as a group.

A June 2023 MM Jazz cover story reported that the idea came from Lee Ju-yeop (이주엽), head of JNH Music, who suggested a vocal unit to Malo, a singer on his label. Lee also proposed the name, which is the English name of the Carina Nebula (용골자리 성운), a star-forming cloud nicknamed a cradle of stars and widely noticed in 2022 when the James Webb Space Telescope photographed it. Malo said the members chose among several candidate names, and the label's own text explains that the name stands for a team that grows more mysterious and beautiful the closer you get and wants to be found anew each time. Park Raon added that the members' first idea was the name 사당패, after the wandering troupes of Korean folk performers, and that the four still use it as the title of their group chat.

Malo took over the casting. By her own account she weighed first how naturally the four voices and tone colors would blend, since harmony singing punishes a voice that sticks out, and then whether the singers would get along, because the group would have to rehearse together for long stretches. She runs the jazz club Janus, which let her watch the field of Korean women singers at close range, and a Newsis interview from May 2023, as summarized by MM Jazz, has her naming technique first and warmth second as her criteria. She also gave a reason for an all-female line-up: there are far more women than men singing jazz in Korea, closeness was easier among women, and she could cover any male part herself. Park Raon said the first team meeting took place on May 8, 2022, and that about a year later the album was recorded and out. Kim Min Hee, the youngest, was a student of Malo's, and Kang Yun-mi told MM Jazz that about a month into rehearsals the four began addressing each other without honorifics, after Malo said she wanted to be a musical colleague rather than a senior. Rehearsals ran from six to more than twelve hours a day, sometimes starting at ten in the morning.

Kang Yun-mi said she barely knew the other three before the project, and the MM Jazz writer noted that all four had worked almost entirely as front-line soloists, with little experience of supporting or stepping back. The writer called the group the first of its kind in Korean jazz and observed that outside trot there was no Korean precedent for an all-women vocal group; the writer also heard the American groups Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 as partial models. Kang Yun-mi, for her part, said in the same interview that no other Korean group could then sing bebop vocal numbers of this kind.

Good Match has twelve tracks and runs about 58 minutes. The band is the pianist Lee Myeong-geon (이명건), the guitarist Hwang I-hyeon (황이현), the bassist Jeong Yeong-jun (정영준) and the drummer Lee Do-heon (이도헌), with the percussionist Kim Jeong-gyun (김정균) on five tracks; MM Jazz notes that the pianist, bassist and drummer are the core of Malo's own band. The repertoire was planned in advance as a mix of jazz standards, folk and children's songs, and Korean popular songs, so that listeners new to jazz would recognize some of it, and the group arranged it in a jazz style. Malo composed and arranged the title track "Good Match", a fast swing on which the four voices scat in the lines of a bebop head with the band, about three minutes and 40 seconds long by the label's description, and the other original, "Carina's Tune", a Latin-feeling scat piece built so that no single voice can carry it alone. She also composed "날이 가면" (As Days Go By) to words by Lee Ju-yeop. Standards and covers include the Gershwins' "Fascinating Rhythm", Jon Hendricks's "Everybody's Boppin'", Buddy Johnson's "Save Your Love for Me", arranged by Kang Yun-mi, and "Susie Q", the Dale Hawkins rock and roll song that Creedence Clearwater Revival also recorded, opened by an a cappella introduction. Two songs were given Korean words by Malo: Dorival Caymmi's "Doralice", the bossa nova associated with João Gilberto, as "도라리스", and Kirby Shaw's "I Return to Music" as "음악으로 돌아가네". Malo explained that Korean lyrics let more listeners understand a song at once, and that the Portuguese words of "Doralice" are as funny as its tune.

Park Raon arranged two Korean songs: "노들강변", a 1930s new folk song, and "님과 함께", the 1970s Nam Jin hit. She said she gave both a more narrative, modal feeling in place of the original's light bounce, and the label notes that "님과 함께" turns from a cheerful dance number into a wistful lyric piece. The album closes with "엄마야 누나야", Kim Sowol's poem as set to music by Kim Gwang-su, sung a cappella. The singers also recorded Pharrell Williams's "Happy", but the rights holder never answered the request for clearance, so it was left off the album; in June 2023 Malo said they might release it as a single if approval ever came, and the song has stayed in their live sets alongside Bill Withers's "Lean on Me". The group made official videos for "Good Match" and "Susie Q", in which all four wear boyish, androgynous outfits; Kang Yun-mi explained that the styling was meant to break the stereotype of a female jazz singer in an evening dress. The cover, in the same spirit, shows four pairs of trousered legs in black heels and a tangle of microphone cable. Kang Yun-mi said the audience's favorite song so far was the title track, which the four also consider the best statement of the group's identity.

A release concert was scheduled for June 3, 2023 at the Mapo Arts Center in Seoul, and Jazz Avenue's May 2023 listing also announced a performance for the EBS program Space Gongam at its Space Hall on June 29, 2023; the program's full episode (number 1639) is on EBS's channel. On October 7, 2023 the quartet closed the first night of the Art Valley Asan jazz festival with Jarasum, held on the lawn at Sinjeongho lake, according to News Seoul. Jeju CBS announced a free "Jazz in Jeju" concert at the Jeju Arts Center on October 22, 2024 at 7:30 p.m., calling it the group's first Jeju appearance, with a program of "Fascinating Rhythm", "Everybody's Boppin'", "Happy" and "Lean on Me" and a radio broadcast on October 26.

Kang Yun-mi is named as the fourth member in the 2023 press and again in the October 2024 Jeju announcement. She is described in label and press biographies as a former classical piano student who became a jazz singer, with a debut album in 2015, Story Haven't Told You Yet, two solo albums by 2023 and a place in the jazz duo 유월의 인사. By November 2025 the Goyang Foundation for Arts and Culture listed the members as Malo, Park Raon, Cho Hae-in (조해인) and Kim Min Hee, for a morning concert on November 29, 2025 at the Goyang Aram Nuri Eoulim Theater, with "Good Match", "Lean on Me" and "Susie Q" among the songs. In 2026 the fourth singer was Lim Chae-hee (임채희). The four sang together at the Seo-gu Cultural Center in Daegu on April 11, 2026, a free concert billed as Jazz Divas with Lee Myeong-geon, Jeong Yeong-jun, Hwang I-hyeon and Lee Do-heon as the band, and Seoul Shinmun and Newsis announced Carina Nebula with Malo, Park Raon, Kim Min Hee and Lim Chae-hee as the fourth of five concerts for the first anniversary of Janus in Gwanghwamun, on September 22, 2026.

The group's sound is four-part jazz vocal harmony, with each member also stepping out as a soloist, over a standard piano, guitar, bass and drums rhythm section. Its signature is wordless scat sung in ensemble, treated as an instrument: "Good Match" gives the four voices a bebop line, "Carina's Tune" splits a Latin melody among them, and "Susie Q" and "Save Your Love for Me" use an a cappella introduction and organ-style left-hand voicings sung by the voices, as the label describes them. The repertoire runs from the Gershwins and Jon Hendricks to Korean folk and children's songs, so that the same album has a bebop vocal number, a blues ballad, a bossa nova in Korean and an unaccompanied poem. MM Jazz named Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 as the models it heard, and Malo herself said the aim was to hold on to jazz's basic identity while drawing in people new to the music.

The group is jazz first. Some of its material is pop, children's song and rock and roll, but it is arranged as jazz, performed at jazz festivals and clubs, and nominated in the Korean Music Awards' jazz vocal category.