Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 1/12/2025 PLUS end of year survey!
It’s time for the last Kpopalypse roundup of 2025! Let’s take a look at some new releases and also have your say in the 2025 end of year survey!
Taeyeon – Panorama
The song is only average but this video will definitely please certain lesbian Kpopalypse readers who want to vicariously live out their “being in a band with Taeyeon” fantasies.
Yena feat. Hatsune Miku – Star!
I know that some of you readers will be bummed about roundup finishing, but let’s face it – when some fucking Hatsune Miku shit gets nearly top-billing in a Kpopalypse roundup, that’s when you know that roundup has done its dash for the year and we should just put it to bed until 2026.
Stray Kids – Divine
Actually there’s a really good old-school hip hop beat here, it’s just a pity about all the other nonsense that they throw in.
Heize feat. I.M – Love Virus
More like boredom virus.
ITZY – DYT
Oh god, it’s awful. JYPE have been all over the place this year. I guess I can’t complain too much – I’d rather have the risk-taking that generates occasional bangers plus slop like this, than just mediocrity all the time. Song still sucks though lol
NiziU Riku, Ayaka & Miihi – Fairy Magic
Niziu have some subunits for us this week and the first one isn’t quite as bad as the j-trash it’s imitating, but it’s close enough to still be unlistenable.
NiziU Mako, Makuya & Rima – Villain
A little off-brand for Niziu here and that’s definitely a good thing, I wouldn’t say this is great as it lacks catchiness for sure but there’s at least a vaguely okay backing track.
NiziU Rio Maya Nina – Too Much
And this is similar. Looks like they couldn’t even be bothered finishing making the box video for this one.
RESCENE – Bloom
A rule of k-pop is that the shorter the grass, the better the song. In this video there’s a few different grass lengths at play and it definitely reflects that the song is about average or maybe slightly above.
NOWZ – HomeRUN
The group name “Now Z” sounds like something they’d tell viewers to do on Play School. It fits because writing about this group is making me sleepy. To be fair the backing track is decent here but they sure wrote some forgettable stuff to go over it.
NOWZ – Run With Me
All these songs with “run” in the title and they’re performing it while sitting down? Quality control definitely wasn’t here making sure that the visuals aligned with the lyrical concept.
Handong ft. Dami – Peekaboo
Dreamcatcher girls continue their Vivizification, with this being basically a crappier version of those recent Viviz solo stages.
NEXZ – Legacy
NOWZ, NEXTZ… we’re really running out of ideas folks. I can’t wait for roundup to FuckoffZ for the year so I don’t have to worry about looking at stuff like this for a while.
DEUX – Rise
Now that NewJeans have ensured that their sound is trending again, original 90s k-poppers Deux are back to remind you about why you all forgot them for 30 years.
VERIVERY – Red (Beggin’)
I’m beggin’ for the boring songs to stop this week.
THE SSYNDROME – Alive
If “Dreamcatcher company” think this type of music is what we want, I can see why they had so many issues with trying to break Dreamcatcher themselves.
OAH! – Take It Back
Even these nugus heavy it up just a little bit more than the latest group from the company that was going to bring metal into k-pop for about two seconds before someone decided that was a little too risky.
UX1 – Halo
I take back that thing I said about the short grass before, this group just fucked it up for me by having neat trim lawn and also being shit. Thanks, cunts.
SEVENUS – Airplane Mode
I’d say ‘mrds’ but it’s probably AI or some shit. It’s a sad time in human history when we can no longer trust dogs in music videos to be real.
BE BOYS – Earth and Moon
I couldn’t be fucked with another k-pop boy song so let’s have our last weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! “It’s A Sin” was recorded before Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys came out as gay in 1994 but it was pretty obvious to basically everyone by this point anyway, and this song’s lyrics need no explaining. Worth noting that this video invented the colour brown in music videos.
DKB – Weekend
I really should have put the Pet Shop Boys song over this garbage DKB song instead, so fuck it, I will. Although “It’s A Sin” obviously hits the BADING theme the hardest I still think “Suburbia” is their best song, at least out of the ones I’ve heard, which is a lot of them. I saw Pet Shop Boys live a while back and was shocked at just how many of their songs I actually knew, despite basically making no effort thoughout my life to keep up with them.
Gwangil Jo – YA!
Decent beat, I have no idea if the rap is good or not, but I’ll definitely hire this guy if I ever need to yell at somebody in Korean really quickly.
EZ – Ez Like Queen
Oh dear.
Balming Tiger, Yaeji – Break It Even
Nobody could be fucked and it shows.
Peach Truck Hijackers – Compressed Annoyance
Boring song tbh but I’m loving the group name and song name. Points for those alone.
Peach Truck Hijackers – Fuck You
This other song of theirs is much better.
WESS – How To Be Cool?
Fucked if I know, imagine asking me that shit. Just don’t listen to anything in this week’s roundup, that’d be a good start I guess.
Yangpa – Folds of Time
I was going to leave with somethinbg old-school and nice but hey sorry, it’s shit. Oh well that’s it for roundup good riddance until 2026, gonna start writing my favourites list now and erase this garbage from my memory and enjoy life.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
K-Pop MVs Shot at the Paradise Diner
I’m pretty sure that there’s a few of these Paradise Diner compilations floating about, but I thought this was a good one, I enjoyed the context in the captions.
random kpop idols saying the nword (parts 1 and 2)
Oh, relax. They’re probably all miming anyway.
Apink – MYMY
Back in the days before Gfriend changed the molecular structure of the universe, there was Apink and this early song of theirs is quite typical of their early sound and it’s not bad. Looking back it’s surreal how everyone looks just slightly Rachel Kim’ed, she really was the gold standard for k-pop visuals back then. No wonder Mina couldn’t control her jealousy.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week…. no, that’s the last of Kpopalypse roundup for 2025! Thank fuck for that It’s been a fun ride full of great songs, here’s your schedule for the rest of the year!
OUT NOW, CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE – 2025 end of year survey/clearing house song submission form!
4th December 2025 – Christmas QRIMOLE!
18th December 2024 – Stats and metrics for 2024!
25th December 2024 – Christmas 2025 k-pop songs roundup!
27th December 2024 – Clearing house post for 2024 (songs that missed roundups)!
28th December 2024 – Honourable and dishonourable mentions for 2025!
31st December 2024 – Kpopalypse’s 30 worst k-pop songs of 2025!
31st December 2024 – Kpopalypse’s 30 favourite k-pop songs of 2025!
…and probably some other shit, too!
The release of the honourable/dishonourable posts and best/worst posts will also be livestreamed at the usual place. If you want to make sure you don’t miss them, you can access a countdown to the honourable/dishonourable livestream by clicking HERE and a countdown to the best/worst livestream by clicking HERE! Stay safe, caonimas!
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