Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 8/9/2025
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Aespa – Rich Man
An absolutely killer concept, whoever is steering aespa’s conceptual direction lately has been doing a great job. The song itself is lagging behind heavily though, serving limp major-over-minor melodies and weak drum-machine taps in places where a super-hard live kit sound would have been more preferable. At least the drum covers will be great.
YOUNG POSSE – YSSR
…and Young Posse’s new song has exactly the same problem as aespa’s new song this week. I think I like Young Posse a little better here just because of that mad keyboard loop, but they stumble at the same hurdle. Throw the pissweak drum machine loops out, kids.
Seo Eve feat. Choco – Super Girl
Your bias is consistently fucking mid as fuck, meanwhile Seo Eve just keeps being great, all the time. This isn’t even her best song, or even her best song this year, and it’s still better than everything most of your botoxed faves ever touched. One day she’ll probably have to do a boring sitting-on-chairs k-ballad for the bucks but today is not that day.
CORTIS – Fashion
I should absolutely hate this song but there’s these sounds way in the background that almost sound like atmospheric black metal guitars and it kind of works to offset the cringe rapping, so I can tolerate this overall.
TDYA – Keep The Light
Some new k-pop supergroup featuring Loossemble’s Hyunjin and… some other people, and it’s not very exciting. They’re going to need a bit more than this in the tank to get back to those Loona levels of international notoriety.
MOMOLAND – Rodeo
Someone tries to recapture a bit of the feel of “Bboom Bboom” for Momoland and it just doesn’t quite work, because the songwriting smarts and the production style both aren’t quite there. Still, I guess better this than the nu-school NewJeansification all the other C-tier girl groups are doing at the moment.
PURPLE KISS – Want U Back
Well, we’d like Purple Kiss back with proper music videos instead of shot-on-phone crap and disbandment plans but we can’t always have what we want, can we? Guess I’ll just have to settle for my five seconds of Swan screentime.
DAY6 – Inside Out
Day6 with the half-hearted rock thing yet again. I’m bored.
DAY6 – Dream Bus
Their other song where they’re trying to rock less hard is actually a little bit better, I guess being soft as shite is their thing.
Stray Kids – Bleep
Yeah not the best Stray Kids song ever, this one’s a bit of a mess, made worse by some really terrible lyrics. I’d say that English wasn’t the right choice but a lot of them are fluent English speakers so maybe it doesn’t matter and they’d sound just as corny in Korean.
Stray Kids – 0801
It’s cool that Stray Kids are sharply aware that their fandom are probably suffering from mental illness and could use a bit of help getting over depression and stuff. I mean I’m a big Darkthrone fan but they never made a song like “chin up, keep striving for your dreams, even when it gets tough” lyrics… which would have been cool coming from them actually. We believe in you, Fenriz.
Stray Kids – Creed
One day years ago I was recording in the studio with a band and the engineer said about my guitar “those guitar pickups sound like sandpaper”. Little did we know that we pre-empted the sound of this track by about 20 years.
X:In – Rrrun
A great opening with a really unusual and cool backing track gives way to a pretty generic song structure once it gets going, what a shame.
KickFlip – Band-Aid
“Band-aid” is a registered trademark so JYP Christian Ministries better have gotten permission for this song or they might have more legal trouble on the horizon once they’re done with terrorising ex-VCHA members.
CIX – Wonder You
Not a bad song, and there’s even some abs-flashing in the video – not enough to chart above Saja Boys in the objectification survey though, by the way thanks to all those of you who voted! Part one of the results is already published and the other parts are coming soon, expect them fondly!
Idntt – Instant Chemistry
This “special video” is crap and so is the song so let’s have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! This week it’s… okay, so a reader sent this in, and I’m not sure what to make of it but after doing some research I think it’s a guy called Shamu Azizam who also goes by the names of Bbyshamu and Muzizmu, although Muzizmu seems to be the project name at the moment. He has a website (NSFW), a lot of gay-friendly visuals over on his Twitter where he just sort of stands around in nature showing his body a lot (very NSFW), and if you want something a bit more hardcore he has you covered there too as he has had a gay porn appearance recently (about as NSFW as it gets)… and he also makes this really chilled out, nice, dark ambient music which is legitimately good and not at all what I was expecting after checking out all the other stuff.
0WAVE – Take me for granted
This group sound okay but the song drags a bit, I think I’d enjoy this songwriting style on something a bit pacier.
Hyolyn – Shotty
I don’t love it but it’s still probably the best thing Hyolyn has done as a solo artist, and it’s R&B – don’t die of shock! It kind of works because the beat is heavy enough to take some of the smoothness out of it, and while there’s still problems (too much improv, lazy vocal writing in general) it’s more good than bad.
Playna – P.O.U: Point of U
They’ve got that statue that seems to appear in all the nugu videos, but this one’s already got too much traffic for a Nugu Alert apperance. They’re young but so is Seo Eve and Seo Eve is great, so youth officially isn’t an excuse, the company behind this better get their shit together and get a better song than this tysm uwu
DNA – Change The World
If only changing the world was as simple as singing about it a lot in a song. If these people are going to change their world I suggest that they start with their songwriting team.
Dahye – Race
Some boring R&B thing, it’s a skip.
Jun.k feat. Changbin – R&B Me
“R&B” isn’t just a shit music style, it’s now something that can be done to someone? Music lovers will never leave their rooms again, afraid that someone might “R&B them” on the street. Scary times.
Zion.T – Heroine
Remember back when Zion.T was relevant? Neither do I.
Chanyeol – Ocean Drive
There’s a shitton of solos this week from veteran idols and I’ll probably skip most of them for quality reasons but Chanyeol’s one is great and actually better than probably almost everything EXO ever did. It’s depressing when big labels show that they actually know what a good song for their boy solos is, because if that’s the case why are they fucking it up the other 95% of the time.
Huta – Break Free
Look at him mocking boxing culture at 1:20. He should write a handwritten letter of apology… what do you mean he just likes boxing and it’s a heartfelt tribute, get the fuck outta here…
Haechan – Taste of Light
Well it’s certainly a taste of something…
Haechan – CRZY
It’s better than his other song though, some acoustic guitar driven quasi-flamenco poop.
Illuvan – Fake Paradise
It’s sad times when even the unknown rock bands just choose to sound like something from JYP Christian Ministries.
Kim Sihun – 00:01
This guy is a refugee from some shit survival show, so we’ll forgive him his mid rocking, it’s actually not bad. Unlike the indie bands he has an excuse, this is probably all his mental state can cope with.
Jeong Sewoon – Colors
Don’t be fooled by the thumbnail it’s just more soft rock shit.
Contempodivo – Mr. Gandhara
It’s not mocking okay, they’re just really into caveman culture.
Ashiko feat. Koreangroove – YBSY
Generic gym music. In fact I swear I’ve heard that exact keyboard riff at the gym this week, just with a different vocal hook paired with it.
LIPSTICKERZ – Motivation
It’s not as good as their song from the other week but just putting this here so caonimas know that I noticed it, you’re welcome.
Dabda – DDDD!
I’ll leave you with this, which isn’t bad actually and has the kind of drum sound aespa should explore sometime – do it, SM!
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Josh Bae – How your favourite k-pop songs are made
Good video at least in terms of explaining the very basics of production style, even if some of the history lesson stuff is a little off-base. Nayeon’s ABCD sounding like a “Crazy In Love” clone isn’t new territory for k-pop, both Secret and Ailee were churning out constant copies of that crappy song back in their heyday.
Chris Han (Blitzers) – Nugu k-pop idol truth exposed
This is what it’s like for nearly everybody in music worldwide, gotta get those part time jobs to bank up money to do your next music thing. Even many well known names around the world can’t make a decent living off music in 2025, with big artists raising tour funds via Kickstarter and auctioning off their instruments. If you like Blitzers and want to support them, drop by their coffee shop I guess.
Uhm Jung Hwa – Invitation
A reasonable enough song pretty much completely ruined by one simple factor, which is that ultra-grating flute sound. Flutes were really the absolute wrong choice for this track, which tries to do “sultry mid-tempo dance track” but falls flat on its ass because the flautist sounds like they’re constantly gasping for air all over the mix and it just kills the vibe they’re going for completely. Almost any other instrument doing the same line would have worked better, hell I’d even take Fender Rhodes keys over flute for this. What a monumental fuck-up.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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