Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 9/6/2025

It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!

You folks didn’t stream Fifty Fifty’s “Starry Night” enough, now look what happened…

ILLIT – Little Monster

One of the wildest k-pop videos I’ve ever seen, but the actual music is just pure blandness, Illit’s worst song in a long time. They won’t be picking up those expired NewJeans advertising contracts with go-nowhere songs like this.

Le Sserafim – Different

Not as different as hyped, it’s just the usual mid-paced brassy girl group thing you’ve all heard done before and better.

KISS OF LIFE – Lips Hips Kiss

Kiss Of Life have finished with blackface birthday parties, now they’re going back to just ripping off the worst aspects of black music like every other k-pop artist ever, because nobody seems to mind that sort of thing. At least they look great doing it, don’t forget to think positive thoughts now.

QWER – Rebound

QWER are back on “T.B.H” form with this new song, which is actually an ad for… branded credit cards, or something? How can I make my own bank adopt these?

QWER – Dear

This other song is pretty decent as well. Not quite sure what’s supposed to be going on in the quasi-drama video, probably something about the virtues of feminism because it’s QWER the only genuinely feminist group in idol pop of course, but whatever, song’s good or at least better than most of everything else this week.

BABYMONSTER – Ghost

Nobody could even be bothered arranging the Babymonster girls in one room for this, palming off the video appearance to some Japanese actress who is also a fan apparently. Maybe they’ll get a few more fans over in Japan if they keep trying, who knows.

ITZY – Girls Will Be Girls

Girls with shit music will be girls with shit music.

Izna – Beep

The same anemic Newjeansified nonsense everyone is doing now. I supposed k-pop has had worse trends and we’ll probably look back on this era with nostagia in ten years but I’m sure getting sick of this sound right at the moment.

KIRRAS – Ziller

Not as agressively shit as their other song last week, but still nothing like something you’d want to listen to.

ENHYPEN – Bad Desire (With or Without You)

Craptacular high school project tier AI backgrounds and filters ruin the visuals completely, but the song itself isn’t too bad. Maybe next time they’ll graduate to the underground parking garage.

STAYC – Lover, Killer

Stayc’s latest Japanese comeback is actually quite good, and it’s nice to see them find a use for all those coloured fluro tubes that keep popping up in nugu videos.

UAU – Attitude

Dreamcatcher’s Vivizified spinoff group have several new songs this week, and this one is notable for being particularly disastrous. Lesson to aspiring k-pop producers, make sure your instruments are actually in tune before you start the recording session, it’s much harder to fix it in the mix later.

UAU – Good Luck

I’m not sure what’s scammier, the girls waving stuffed toys around as if they actually won them from the claw machines instead of getting the maintenance guy to open the things up so they could grab some toys to pose with, or the existence of this group in general.

UAU – Sacrifice

The best song from UAU this week is still painfully awkward and the girls sure look like they’re really not on board with the Vivizification but are just doing this out of sheer commercial desperation. At least it has a solid groove and some worthy bass playing.

NMIXX – Papillon

It seems almost unfair to judge this song based on the ill-fitting “live” version. It’s okay, we know you’re a k-pop group, you don’t need to try and convince us this hard that you’re “real music” or whatever.

KATSEYE feat. Ice Spice – Gnarly (Ice Spice Remix)

Scarcely different from the original, the addition of Ice Spice here doesn’t really mean anything beyond name value.

KATSEYE – Gnarly (Lara of KATSEYE x Lancey Foux x Slush Puppy Remix)

At least this other remix actually changes something significant about the song, unfortuantely the changes aren’t anything good.

USPEER – Zoom

Some really promising sections in this song but it’s all ruined by too many momentum-killing change-ups and an overly “bright” tone that doesn’t match the rhythms at all. In the end it’s a mess.

dearAlice – Sweet

Actual rubbish, it’s pretty abundantly clear why SM doesn’t dare to put their own branding on their own EXP Edition style boy group.

INI – Dominance

I’m so bored so let’s have our non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! Someone wrote to me and suggested that I make American punk group G.L.O.S.S (Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit) the feature sometime… great suggestion! Some of the best, most fired-up punk music I’ve heard lately, this band were absolute killer. Their only official album other than demo tapes is “Trans Day Of Revenge“, it’s only seven minutes long and it’s just brutal from start to finish. The band broke up shortly after it was made because they couldn’t be fucked dealing with record deals or being a touring group basically. Relatable!

XD – Falling Stars

Back to k-pop and… well it’s just a sorry state of affairs, isn’t it.

EPEX – Wonderful

I’ve been listening to a lot of 90s rap group Onyx lately and EPEX remind me of that here with the random ass gang vocals for no reason.

EPISODE – Look at me

This is the sort of thing that’s normally go in my Nugu Alert series but it’s hard to write a Nugu Alert-worthy amount of text about an average song filmed on a plain white background.

IHOTEU – Change

Like their Japanese counterparts, Korean “live idol” groups mostly have pretty mid songs, and this is no exception, but Ihoteu at least gets the sonics and production style right.

666 – Rock Rock Rock

Definitely not as good as I expected given that promising group and song title, but it’s still reasonable enough I guess, at least they put some guitar soloing in. Man, what bland songs this week, I’m really reaching to try and put something positive in these reviews, damn.

Traveller, Garden – Sparkling Hangang

A decent enough song but those voices get so annoying that it becomes a chore to listen to long before it’s over.

Elkie – Youth is an unfinished film

More absolute crap from ex-CLC Elkie, she should have worried less about her youth being an unfinished film and more about this being an unfinished song.

ISHA, E.SO – Meow!

These Berry Good members can’t do anything right since leaving their old group either. You can tell just by the thumbnail exactly what sort of song this is, and exactly how boring it’s going to be.

Yunsae – Damn Good Girl

Lots and lots of average songs this week.

Soorin – Yes, I’m a Hot Mess Girl!

Seriously. Just blandness all over. I was waiting for some sort of “hot mess” to happen buyt it didn’t.

EZUZ – Don’t Touch

I’m not sure what type of “humour” is going on here but it seems gimmicky and stupid and the song sucks anyway so let’s just move on.

B.I. feat. Heize – Ferris Wheel

Yawn.

Jackson Wang – Hate to Love

Jackson Wang has some banger songs. This isn’t one of them.

Nacoco – Blood Moon

Nacoco is a Youtuber guitar shredder type person who wears a mask for whatever reason and caonimas have been linking me her videos for ages. Now she has an original song and it’s nothing that special because it really doesn’t lean heavily enough into her main drawcard which is her guitar skills, but it’s probably still one of the best songs this week just because almost everything else is so bland.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Josh Bae – This K-pop Group Invented a New Genre

Regardless of what you might think of NMIXX – no they didn’t invent shit. Prog rock bands were switching up styles in songs half a century ago, just because JYP put a cute little branding on it and applied the idea to some girl-pop doesn’t mean it’s really anything new. Golden rule – if it doesn’t have its own place card in a record store, it’s not a real genre, it’s a marketing buzzword.

Jimin’s pinky toe – Why I’m Unstanning Idle

Don’t care.

Harisu – Temptation

Harisu’s song from 2001 isn’t actually very good, but it’s a stark reminder of how women used to be allowed to be sexy in k-pop and how far we’ve fallen since then. These days if your sexual presentation doesn’t appeal to pedophiles first and foremost it’s a no-go.

That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!