Another year means another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! Let’s take a look at the first crop of nugus for 2026!

It’s nearly the end of February and there hasn’t been any Kpopalypse Nugu Alerts yet this year, so that means it’s time to get started! The nugu stash is certainly piling up and there’s lots of artists out there both new and old all clamouring for attention. These ones probably have no hope in hell of any real success but if we feature them here, it’s possible that they might “do an Ejae” and be thrust under the spotlight in the future – but probably not. Anyway there’s no theme for this episode other than I thought all these tracks were at least okay, or interesting, or funny.

Usual Kpopalypse Nugu Alert rules apply, artists must meet the following criteria:

• Less than 20,000 views across official channels
• Unlikely to be asked to ghost-write the songs for an award-winning film that breaks international records
• Relevant to Kpopalypse

Let’s take a look!

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SKAWAKERs – Tiger Spirit Arises

Just scraping in for Kpopalypse Nugu Alert eligibility due to the high viewcount (although it did take them about a decade to collect those views), here’s a more vintage nugu to get us started. SKAWAKERs are, predictably, a ska group. Sure, they present like a girl group here, kind of, but this is an illusion created by carefully crafted dance routine footage plus backing dancers. If in doubt, check out this very recent impressive live footage, which is impressive because not only does it prove that they are still around but there seem to be more members of the band on stage than there are patrons in the audience (relateable).

Looks like a fun time though, I would definitely check them out. Anyway their song is actually pretty damn good, so enjoy.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 19270

Notable attribute: no expense spared on tiger cameo at 4:23 – mrcs

Nugu Alert Rating: high

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Lil Sion – Chopper Control Train

I was in a band once with a guy who was a little too into trains. Touring in a car with him was annoying because he’d deliberately take the routes that went along the train tracks, and every time a train appeared he knew exactly what locomotive it was and he’d reel off all these random facts about it like any of the rest of us gave a shit. I’ve lost touch with him now (he vanished a while back in a puff of marijuana smoke) but if he was still around I’d definitely introduce him to this song (right after asking about the money he still owes me) which is seemingly by someone else equally unhealthily obsessed . Anyway this song is pretty crazy and unhinged and even the hard Autotune kind of works for it, because it just adds to the hyper-insanity level of everything. It’s probably better or at least more interesting than any of the music that we played together back then. The accompanying video features a mixture of real and seemingly AI-generated trains and they go along tracks and stuff which is not very interesting although it probably is if you’re that guy. What is up with train people. Apparently it’s a really big autistic thing to like trains so I guess I’m not as autistic as I thought I was, but this video is definitely finding its audience because it has way more views than it feels like it should have.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 6117

Notable attribute: favourite train is definitely the “Damn Contradiction” at 2:04

Nugu Alert Rating: very high

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Milli Machine – Hands Up

On the face of it I really shouldn’t like “Hands Up”, but I do. A bunch of rap losers yelling in a basement somewhere should definitely be uncool, but it’s actually great here, giving similar energy to 912 Crew’s immortal “Roller Skate“. I think it’s partly because the beat and rapping is fairly fast, and partly because everyone involved doesn’t look like they’re either posing out trying to be tough, or completely hating life which is the other big cliche in the rap world. Rap is allowed to be fun but nobody realises it because they’re too busy worried about how much “real” they’re keeping. These guys are so “don’t give a fuck” that all the graffiti is basically just flowers, they’re definitely getting in touch with their feminine side. I mean this in a good way of course, this song could only be more LGBT-friendly if someone was wearing a Siwon shirt.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 810

Notable attribute: Anua cream tube at 1:58 shows these boys are taking good care of their skin, maybe that’s what the song means: “hands up” to the cream dispenser?

Nugu Alert Rating: extreme

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Peanutbread, imDumberThanYou – Drive into your heart

So I’m not sure if the artist title is actually one artist or two. Is Peanutbread one of the guys and imDumberThanYou is the other guy? If so, which one’s which? Or, is it a group name and “Peanutbread, imDumberThanYou” is the name of the group? All this confusion if having a comma in the artist name might give you the reader some confusion as maybe from the header title of this post you were expective five artists in this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, so I’m sorry if you got 20% less nugus than you were expecting. Despite this confusion I was compelled to throw the song in anyway because it’s not bad actually and should please readers who have loved other synthpop gems that have charted on Kpopalypse favourites lists in recent times.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 337

Notable attribute: multiple fire extinguishers sitting on the ground at 0:49 is definitely non-OH&S compliant, good luck if you can’t get into that corner when a blaze breaks out

Nugu Alert Rating: extreme

 

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That’s all for this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert – the series will return soon!

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

Apparently k-pop fans are upset with Red Velvet’s Wendy (again) because instructional English content to help you learn dialects is now racist or something. Which means that by that standard, my entire Australian language post must be racist against Australians. Mind you we do deserve it, we really are a bunch of cunts.

STAYC – Mwuah

It’s a slow week for idol groups thanks to Lunar New Year, don’t expect too much from your faves this week. Stayc trot out some “for the fans” thing that isn’t terrible but has absolutely nothing in it to set it apart from anything else in particular. You’d heard this song before. Sure, it was called something different, another group sung it, and the words were somewhat different and the melody goes up in a few places where this goes down or whatever, but trust me, you’ve already heard it.

YOUNG POSSE feat. Koonta – Pilot3

Young Posse’s trio hip-hop concept is just fine when they’re reviving the good bits of retro-hip-hop. The lame 90s R&B junk that was hated by everyone sensible at the time and is still hated now, didn’t need reviving.

Jiwoo – Home Sweet Home

Readers pointed out to me that this song sounds like Ash B’s excellent “C’mon” (which charted in the “2025 most fappable videos” list, naturally) if it was, in fact, total shit instead of awesome. I agree.

Yeojin – My Valentine

Yeojin should stop this yacht-disco nonsense and get back to murdering people like she does in my computer games.

Blackswan – Double Down

The saddest thing about Dr Music pushing this AI slop on us isn’t that they’re neglecting the girls (although they are), or that the song is shit (which it is), or that Fatou has two thumbs at 0:06, but that it represents the death knell of creative cartoon style k-pop MVs. We used to get cool shit like 2NE1’s excellent “Hate You” video, but probably nobody’s ever going to do something like that ever again because these days it’s cheaper and quicker to make the AI slop version. These companies don’t care about you the fan experiencing anything of quality, so you can bet that the slop version always wins. Nobody would have stood for this nonsense back in Frask Mitoi’s days.

TXT feat. HYDE – SSS (Sending Secret Signals)

See what I mean? It’ll never be good again until people finally get so fed up that they start dismantling the data centers. Sim Fiicraiziz must be turning in his grave.

ENHYPEN ft. Soyoon – No Way Back

In the absence of most groups doing much at all except Happy New Year videos, Enhypen knuckled down with a bunch of releases to try and sneak some relevance in. Guess what, they’re all boring songs with stupid AI slop visual effects. I bet you never guessed that.

ENHYPEN – Big Girls Don’t Cry

I like how the wanted poster has a question mark after “wanted” instead of a dollar value, because not even the videomakers were sure anybody wanted this shit.

ENHYPEN – Stealer

The best song out of the three isn’t too bad to be honest, sort of like “Antifragile” but without all the interesting bits. No AI slop here either I don’t think. Maybe there’s a correlation.

idnnt – All I Need

I always read “idnnt” as “I didn’t” for some reason, not sure if that’s intentional or not. Anyway this song is definitely all I didn’t need.

TVXQ! – Identity

You know, while I give the concept of “for the fans” videos a lot of shit (and will continue to), a veteran group like TVXQ actually has a solid case for a “for the fans” video. They chould show all their historic content from the birth of the group right up until today, including that time when they were once five members. Gosh what a great idea, now that really would be “for the fans”… I’m sure SM will consider this suggestion now that I’ve mentioned it, won’t they.

AM8IC – Lukoie

How am I supposed to say that fucking group name? It’s times like these I’m glad I don’t do a radio show anymore.

TRIGER – Wake Up

Not much chance of me waking up this week given the song quality on offer.

Jinsol – Eternal Light

This is Jinsol from April. With this horrible religion-infused ballad junk she’s definitely not beating the bullying allegations (and religion isn’t directly mentioned, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s just as obvious when they’re singing about it’s religion under the radar as when it’s sex under the radar.) I bet when she goes doorknocking for the Jehovahs in her area she really wedges her foot in.

WOODZ – Cinema

It would be absolute cinema if Woodz just stopped making music.

Blue Pongtiwat feat. Ten – You Give Me Butterflies

Oh god no.

Madmans Esprit – Dandelion

“Do you know about Madmans Esprit”, I get asked every so often. Yes I do. This very long song (which should satisfy all the “songs are so short these days oh noes” people who really should just give up on pop music completely and go listen to prog or opera or something) mixes black metal and modern djent-core type stuff in weird ways that work pretty well, but the actual melody writing is a bit bland, and that’s what’s always let this group down. Unlucky Morpheus they are not.

Amutta Band – You know my love

Okay the best song this week is by this band you’ve never heard of. I’ve never heard of them either, I guess these are the guys ghostwriting all your faves’ hits just hanging loose and doing what they want for a change.

Yerin Baek – Mirror

Pretty generic funk stuff but still the best thing Yerin Baek has done by a mile just because she’s so thuddingly bland usually. For some reason everyone is very excited about the male actor who is in this video but I am not one of those people so it just seems totally random to me that this old dude just kind of turns up and stares at nothing.

Tomatomat – Tommo Nova

You know the week in k-pop sucks when the very promising group who had a breakout quality song does bossanova as a joke or something.

Hwina – Hello, Sara

Even 2025 favourites-list champion Hwina is no good this week. Dark times.

Sally – Lost At Sea

Here’s this week’s non-Korean random music pick. As I always keep saying, commercial j-pop is fucking bullshit, absolute crap. No group has anything even approaching a half-decent song catalog, it’s just pure junk right across the board and don’t you even start with “but what about” because no. Just no. Always no, forever. They just don’t get it. However when Japanese groups take pop sensibilities and apply them to other genres, the results are often excellent. They’re probably doing metal better than anybody else right now. How there are still metal groups outside Japan even making a living at this point I have no idea, they’re so far ahead of everyone. Enjoy Sally, who is like Dave Mustaine if he was a Japanese girl, and could sing, and play guitar better.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

QWER –sound check for drummers be like

This is true. Drummers are fucking noisy shits, they shouldn’t even be allowed to soundcheck. The audience can always hear the drums, what are you even checking, cunt.

Kuryong – Summoning of Paektu (cassette)

Did you know that North Korea has a black metal band? Now you do. I wonder what the lyrics are about, if they’re not about Kim Jong Il rising up with his army and leading them to revolutionary victory I’ll be incredibly disappointed. Maybe if I feature them here I’ll finally get that North Korean traffic to my site that I’ve been looking for. Also this mini-album is ironically much better than everything in roundup this week.

B.A.P – Power

A somewhat lame chorus is the only thing wrong with what was otherwise a pretty good song back from the “gosh B.A.P are definitely going to be the next big boy group I promise” days. Sadly it didn’t really work out for them like that, but they did leave us with a handful of good songs before disappearing into coffee-shop irrelevance.

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

It’s time once again for Kpopalypse’s most fappable k-pop video list! Those who pretend that they don’t fap to idols, rejoice as Kpopalypse gives you what you secretly want but are too gutless to ask for!

Writing educational and informative posts for Kpopalypse.com is a lot of fun, but it’s even more fun to annoy stupid people who truly deserve it, and that’s where the yearly “most fappable videos” list comes in. K-pop fans are always quick to criticise adult sexy concepts in k-pop, which is why we don’t have many of them anymore and the entire industry has gradually shifted to catering to pedophiles instead. Nothing bothers k-pop fans more than grown men and women being sexy, and there might be some of that sexiness in this list or maybe it’s just a massive troll, but either way I hope you get something out of reading it, even if that something is just thoughts of “why the hell did I click on this article, what was I actually expecting”.

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10. Yoyomi – Dart

Yoyomi had a questionable year for music in 2025 but a good year for visuals, and “Dart” definitely sells the Yoyomi in Yoyomi pretty hard. Isn’t it funny how a fully independent artist like Yoyomi is quite happy to go for an ultra-sexual image whereas men and women employed by the big k-pop agencies do not, it’s almost like labels are selling less sex than what the idols themselves are comfortable with.

9. Ash-B – C’mon

Ash-B has been pretty consistent through the years and has appeared on these lists many times. She’s looking better than ever in “C’mon” which is definitely a song that has the complete package of fapability with Ash-B very much both looking and sounding the part.

8. Wonho – Better Than Me

Wonho has been back from military service for a while now and at first he was easing us back into his “content” slowly, but when “Better Than Me” dropped we all knew that he had returned to creating full strength fap material.

7. Moonbyul – Hoshiakari

Moonbyul is back and she’s definitely throwing a bone to the sapphics here. Not really into the song but the effort they’ve gone into here to lean into Moonbyul’s ideal types of look is outstanding. This video is just shot after shot of Moonbyul in styling and outfits that completely suit her 100%, something that really can’t be said for a lot of her videos – or a lot of anyone else’s videos for that matter.

6. GFRIEND – Always

Gfriend’s stab at a fake-reformation “Forever 1” style song where they try to pretend that they’ll never ever ever break up ever again pinky swear to prolong the amount of time they can keep their fandom clinging on for dear hope is pretty shit. However the girls do lots of dressups and have never looked better. Also, at least the full group actually showed up for the song, unlike certain other groups who have “reunion” videos with gaping lineup holes in them.

5. The KingDom – Last Flower

I was really worried about the KingDom for a while. I saw them live and there was not a hanbok or angrodynous looking outfit in sight, the best I got was a video backdrop with a little bit of ancient Chinese style graphic design in it. I thought they’d turned their back on making me question my sexuality and taking me back to those confused childhood times before my balls dropped when I had heard about sex but had no idea what it meant really. I just thought “sex” back then meant looking pretty like these boys do and rubbing up against things. Looking at this makes me think that maybe I was right back then and everything else I’ve been told since has been a lie.

4. Rockit Girl – I Like You

Leeseul from Rockit Girl takes looking good seriously, and she makes this period-stain-coloured outfit work like a charm by stretching the fabric to breaking point. Of course we know from research that Leeseul isn’t quite this stacked and that this is at least 50% bra, but Kpopalypse.com is a space where we appreciate effort as much as achievement.

3. WILD WILD – Boiler Room

I’m not sure where Wild Wild sits on the sliding scale between “k-pop group” and “bunch of male strippers with a ghostwritten dance track” but then the song’s a banger so I don’t really care. More importantly though, the guys definitely outperformed every other male in k-pop with their fanservice levels. If you want to know who is who, you can check their website, assuming you can keep your hands off your genitals long enough to navigate the mouse pointer over the link and click on it.

2. QWER – Dear

QWER flex their feminist girl-rocking styles once again, and the results are great, if not enough to snatch number one. I think that maybe actually letting the rain from the rain kits fall on the girls might have got us there, and less flanellette might have helped too, but alas it was not to be.

1. Apink – Tap Clap

Apink! They’ve done it again! But how? To find out let’s look at:

KPOPALYPSE WHITE-COATER COMICS PRESENTS

APINK ROUND EIGHT – THE LAST FAP

THE STORY BEGINS EARLY IN 2025…

CLASS BEGINS

LATER THAT DAY

THE NEXT DAY

QWER ABDUCT KPOPALYPSE

LATER ON THE VIDEO SET

THE RESULTS COME IN

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

You know how last year Haknyeon was accused of prostitution and quit The Boyz? Well, turns out it was probably MC Mong all along and Haknyeon was just the fall guy. Putting Haknyeon here as the image though just because he’s a bit nicer to look at.

IVE – Bang Bang

Whoever cleared this song for release is a dumb fuck, I swear. It’s fantastic when the beat is going fast and boring as batshit when it’s going slow. The songwriters had the good sense to at least make the most important sections of the song the fast ones, so it’s definitely still much more of a win than a loss, but it could have been k-pop song of the fucking millennium if they just resisted the urge to constantly dick around with the tempo for no reason.

ILLIT – Not Me

Illit drink some of KiiiKiii’s debut bathwater here, and the results are as tragic as you might expect. Illit, like KiiiKiii, are one of the more “high risk, high reward” groups in k-pop – sometimes great, sometimes utterly worthless, but rarely boring.

MADEIN – Super Obvious

Madein is out here losing more members than John Bobbitt, speaking of which maybe in their next video when they’re swinging baseball bats they should be hitting their CEO, I think the fans would like that.

Raina – Almost Love

I’m clearly having Orange Caramel withdrawal symptoms because whenever I watch one of Raina’s new solo videos I can’t actually find Raina anywhere and this other girl keeps popping up. I have no idea who she is. Someone book me into rehab.

Chungha – Save Me

Poop visualisers of AI nothingshit are not eligible for roundup but I’m putting this here anyway just so you know I didn’t forget, I ignored this song deliberately.

ATEEZ – Adrenaline

A pretty cool bassline driving the track in the verses is the best thing about this song, it’s sadly lacking adrenaline elsewhere.

MONSTA X – Growing Pains

Monsta X have one of the better hit-rates out of k-pop boy groups but this is just the typical for-the-fans poop that everyone does so feel free to skip.

ZEROBASEONE (ZB1) – Lovepocalypse

They wanted to call it “Kpopalypse” but that name was taken. I think it’s only a matter of time before some hapless PR person actually does do that and I pick up a bunch of extra traffic and go viral for being an asshole for the 298th time.

THE SSYNDROME – Good Boy

Actually not too bad, I’ll take this over the likes of generic boy idol “rock” groups. Although they could have dumped that scratchy Tim Henson-ish rhythm guitar playing that’s trendy now and put a fucking guitar solo in there. And why is the keyboard player’s hands off the keyboard during the keyboard’s big solo moment? We need proper rock music video direction for these things.

LNGSHOT – Never Let Go

Someone gotta tell these kids that before you do “for the fans” videos it’s a good idea that you actually have fans to do them for.

AxMxP – Thereafter

Every boy-rock song is a lost opportunity for a girl-rock song to exist in its place.

Kim Miso x Avion – Jamila

Not entirely sure what’s going on here but it’s not all that great. I just wanted to alert you to the fact that this group has a guy in it who looks like a cross between Shindong and that guy from Lionesses with the really annoying voice.

Navillera – No Limit

This badly-edited mess would be perfect for Nugu Alert but it’s already way too popular to qualify. Hey at least they named themselves after a Gfriend song. What the hell is a “Navillera”, anyway?

Youngest – Night Long

I actually remember this group, from back before they were calculus-solving age when they were “Youngest Posse“. They actually weren’t completely awful even back then, and this new song isn’t amazing but it’s still unironically better than a lot of A-list stuff.

SKINZ – Why U Mad

Not sure about that group name, but anyway, there’s so many of these PLAVE-alikes these days, who can even keep up.

Jeong Eunji – Parrot

A pretty awful ballad but it’s worth checking out just to take a look at Eunji’s impressive mouth dimensions. This is probably the best solid focusing on her mouth in any Eunji or Apink video ever so enjoy if that’s what you’re into.

Sungmin – Godsaeng

I’m told this guy was in Super Junior but who can even be sure about that. SM Entertainment are always doing too much with their boy groups, having 57 members across ten countries in six different subunits nobody can remember, they sure paved the way for TripleS. I think that’s why it was BTS who broke through in the end and not an SM boy group, if you dilute the fan-crazy energy too much, you just end up with people acting normal and that’s no good for selling shitty product.

Sungmin – Dancing under the stars

His other song is marginally better but let’s be real, if SM did a poll asking their fans to pick someone random from k-pop to do a trot song he’d probably be about 573rd on almost everyone’s list of choices.

Hwi – That’s Me

Actually sounds really good up until 0:10 and then it’s all over. When will rappers learn that nobody wants to hear them Autotune.

SLAY & Nam Gyuri – Sorrow at my door

Hey, it’s a decent ballad! They do exist, they are just super rare. Of course it’s Nam Gyuri from Seeya, bringing back the old school Pocketdol style ballad… but without Pocketdol, probably not a bad thing.

Lee Nalchi – Do You Know The Five Virtues?

Oh no it’s the tiger lady back again… I think one of the five virtues is “don’t use AI in music videos”, and another is “don’t let Lee Nalchi near a microphone.”

Uneducated Kid – High

Halfway through the song this guy directly asks us why we’re hating. Dude, why do you think? Holy shit it’s not rocket science, you have shit music, that’s all it is. Get better music, or stop making music, or just do it in the privacy of your bedroom and leave us out of it if you want to suck this badly.

Dbo – Let it burn

I give Dbo points this week, he’s not using Autotune (much). He got the message, finally. If you fake-hip-hop douchebags in Korea won’t listen to me, at least listen to other fake hip-hop douchebags.

Sik-K feat. Ley – Namsan Tower

Or don’t. There was so much crap just like this song submitted this week and I got rid of almost all of it. I let this one survive, the way a movie character slaughters a bunch of gang members but lets the one who represents the least future threat live so they can go back and tell their boss not to try that shit ever again.

Rituality – It’s your turn to shine

Starts off sounding impressive but once the shock and awe of Koreans using actual distortion wears off this is surprisingly generic and dull.

Kyuss – Green Machine

Here’s this week’s random music pick and it’s for the person who went to my ask thingy and wanted stoner rock recommendations, you’re welcome (even though it’s not very stonery compared to say, Electric Wizard or something). I know a guy who went to see Kyuss and Slayer play together and booed Kyuss all through Kyuss’ set because he was a huge Slayer fan, and Slayer fans being intolerant of any support act is just what Slayer fans do, apparently. Years later he became a stoner rock fan and realised how great Kyuss were, PLUS how ballsy Kyuss were to even accept the Slayer support gig in the first place knowing full well the reaction they would get, and this was his deepest regret, not appreciating seeing Kyuss properly at the time. Sadly he’s no longer with us, he took that regret to the grave. Don’t be like him. Stan Kyuss.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Le Sserafim’s Lost Media: Everything HYBE Deleted After Garam Left

Here’s a hot tip for people making YouTube videos: if you want people to believe that the things you’re saying in a video are true, don’t use AI to make the fucking video. Also I’m not sure how this person is going to go with their hard legal stance in the intro when they’re literally just showing another company’s copyrighted stuff. YouTube grifters think copyright is like the fucking Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus and an ATM rolled into one these days, mind you it’s probably not entirely their fault that they’re this stupid given the way YouTube itself encourages the abuse of  copyright in unfair ways (by empowering copyright trolls, and by not respecting Fair Use or public domain works, for instance). Anyway I can’t confirm or deny anything in this video, I’m just putting this here to remind you that Kim Garam exists and the legacy of her chalk art will forever be remembered.

Hotelie Pattie – I Became a K-Pop Trainee for 30 Days

Cringe as fuck with tons of unwatchable staged nonsense but I guess if this type of approach is what it takes to get the kiddies who won’t read Kpopalypse.com to realise what it’s like doing the k-pop training thing, why not.

Diva – Joy

Oh come on. How can you even seriously be mad. It’s just funny. But putting aside the old school hip-hop birthday party intro, this song (which finally starts for real at 1:02) is pretty generic for the era and sounds exactly the same as a ton of other stuff from back when it was made. Imagine growing up in a time and place when this was the trend, Koreans my age must feel like they’re on acid when they look at what k-pop is now.

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