Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 2/2/2026
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
i-dle feat. Skaiwater – Mono
Holy fucking blandness. There’s supposed to be some message in here about unity and love or whatever corny fucking bullshit that’s supposedly got everyone into a tizzy at the moment (“what, the hate that fuels my social media bubble could be… bad?”) but good luck even getting far enough through this crap to even notice the theme at all without falling asleep first. You’ll need a race riot in your neighbourhood just to wake yourself up after this one.
YOUNG POSSE – Visa
Where’s my visa to get the fuck off this planet and go somewhere where they have decent hip-hop beats.
Rolling Quartz – Romantist
Rolling Quartz go all-in on the big 80s glam metal ballad style and the results are just as mid as all the originals. Every rose has its thorn, and every Korean rock group has its shit, shit song.
TREASURE – Better Than Me
These kids also doing the ballad thing trying to act all sincere and mature like they don’t have shit even worse than me in their chat histories. Nobody is fooled.
Sunmi – A long long night
Sunmi also in ballad mode. What the fuck? Did a plane full of benzodiazepines get hit with a North Korean test rocket over Seoul and explode and spray its contents over the entire city this week? Someone break out the hazmat suits and save k-pop! Where’s Hitchhiker’s wardrobe department?
IZNA – Sass & Racecar
This is not even really eligible for roundup at all but I’ll throw it in just because this week has been so dull and there’s a real danger you’ll stop reading roundup for good if I don’t put in something at least semi-interesting. “Sass” is kind of mid but acceptable enough, whereas last year’s excellent “Racecar” gets ripped off with a lame shortened version as if it wasn’t already short enough. But it’s a good reminder that good pop music did actually exist and was good last year in places.
LNGSHOT – FaceTime
If you’ve been missing the rapey vibes from boy groups lately, Jay Park’s new one has got you covered, bringing the street harrassment theme back into k-pop once again. The more things change, the more they keep harrassing women who just want to walk around town doing normal shit.
ONE OR EIGHT – Tokyo Drift
Some pathetic song for some shit movie you don’t care about because you still have at least one working braincell gets remade and you didn’t notice because you have better things to do. Wow, me too!
8TURN – Bruise
It’s a sad week in k-pop when the generic millennial-whooping boy-slop is actually on the better side of the songs this week just because everything else is so shit.
WHIB – Rock The Nation
Actually kind of fun because it goes so all-in on the epic pot-clanging nonsense. It’s not something I’d willingly experience again, but it was still pretty funny.
POW feat. Shin Onyu of Shin In Ryu – Come True
The outdoor set looks like that Borderlands game that’s set in the snow, and that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one. Oh my god can I get one good song this week.
Hi-Fi Un!corn – Laila
Yeah yeah this is bland. Next.
SANTO BRAVOS – Kawasaki
Just in case your life wasn’t going badly enough, HYBE have a new boy group that’s focused on the Spanish speaking market. In related news, there’s a court case happening right now where the guy who wrote the first reggaeton beat has sued thousands of other people for using his beat and is trying to get paid from all of it. I feel like whatever way the court case goes, it’ll be a win somehow, because if he loses then people will still legally be able to make music, and if he wins, people won’t legally be able to make music like this.
AB6IX – A Minute, A Second
Good song title because it indicates the maximum amount of time that it’s safe to listen to this garbage before brainrot sets in.
ALL(H)OURS – My Spring, My Light, My Breath
The usual skippable “for the fans” trash.
EVNNE – A Season Drawn In Light
I swear when this started up that I accidentally just played the previous song again. Sad times.
LA POEM – Alive
I wouldn’t exactly say I like La Poem because that delivery of theirs is just such a huge barrier, and this faux metal definitely doesn’t hit, but hey at least they’re different. Some sonic variation is sorely needed in k-pop right now so I hope they keep going.
Luli Lee – You’ll Be My Mad Dog
I’m all for Luli Lee reinventing herself into stoner rock and this is pretty rocking actually. Even the sunny-vibes change-up works well. Finally, a good song this week!
KISEO – Nonfiction
Apparently refugees from the group IHOTEU are in this group, and this is an old IHOTEU song. IHOTEU were a live-idol themed kind of group that had some okayish songs until their CEO got busted cheating on his wife with one of the group members. Anyway this song isn’t very good but it’s a start.
NWHI – Siren Call
And while we’re at it, I’m told about this group that “allegedly their CEO only hires foreign girls to turn them into slaves/traffick victims, by withholding their passports.” So that person who was complaining about human trafficking in porn in QRIMOLE this month… well you don’t need to go all the way to porn for that, human trafficking is in plenty of industries, including right here in k-pop. Allegedly. Oh and completely shit song of course, probably best that you don’t even click at all, don’t worry I’ve watched it so you don’t have to, you’re not missing anything.
MY:RAKL – Wish Upon the Stars
Maybe we actually are better off with the virtual idols. Instead of the creepy “always young, always there for you, wil never cheat on you” marketing, labels should try the angle of “hey the most amount of neglect these boys and girls are ever going to receive is the occasional power outage”.
Lee Jiham – Forever Mine
This guy was from A.C.E apparently. Look how sad he is. It’s your fault, you didn’t vote for his legs enough in my surveys.
Choi Sooho – Something big is coming
You can tell exactly what this sounds like just from the thumbnail. Hey we have enough cringe trot women in roundup, so some cringe trot men is certainly fair.
POLYAMORY – Dopamine
To make this sort of instrumental-focused music work, you need to have either amazingly shit-hot musicianship like Covet, or lots of layers of interesting sound like Cotoba. This group has neither, so the result just sounds empty. At least some bass guitar would have helped.
Pick A Bloom – Carousel
Fucking horrible video direction that will guarantee nobody watches this, which is a shame as it’s a cool song. The right amount of heaviness here, this is what I would have liked to have seen from Latency, Chrockital etc.
Nerdina – Why do you love me?
Like most weeks there was a lot of nugu stuff I just chopped out of roundup because it was the same old slow quiet-verse-loud-chorus midtempo pop/rock stuff, but this one was interesting and different enough to keep. I mean I don’t know if it’s good, but in the absence of good I’ll take different.
Room306 – Sending
mrcs
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Fite Dem Back
Those of you frustrated by the limp hand-holding platitudes in i-dle’s song this week might enjoy the slightly more aggressive lyrical sentiment of this week’s random music pick which is from British dub reggae artist Linton Kwesi Johnson. I’m not wild about a lot of his songs, but “Fite Dem Back” is a classic which has aged well in today’s politically divisive climate, and this sped-up live version is even better than the still quite great original. I was in a mixed-race punk group when I discovered this and we toyed with trying to make it work for us musically but the band sadly disintegrated before we got it up to gigging level, a shame. The weird combination of menacing and joyful really makes this song work, I guarantee that after you hear it you’ll be singing it for a while.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Zach Sang show – XG Talks New Album ‘THE CORE,’ GALA, Cocona’s Story and Jurin’s Solo Debut
My busy writing schedule means I haven’t had time to even watch this myself yet. I did skim it and it seems pretty much like the usual interview drill but it might still be of interest to readers just to hear XG being a bit candid.
82MAJOR – ‘Need That Bass’ SONGCAMP in L.A.
The video submitter here said “given that songcamps have become very common in kpop recently caonimas might be interested in this video which shows how it works when idols are ‘involved”.
After School – Lady Luck
You definitely win caonima points if you even remember that this lost-in-time Japanesse After School comeback even existed, but if you didn’t, don’t feel too excluded because you weren’t missing much. The song has a weirdly chirpy tone that just doesn’t quite work (subunit Orange Caramel did it better) and of course the usual shoehorned-in dubstep segues of the era, it’s a bit disastrous overall. I feel like if someone fed “cute concept After School comeback” into an AI prompt it would actually produce something about this bland… that is, if you could get it to interpret your text correctly, because that’s hard enough for humans let alone AI. All second-generation k-pop fans know the feeling of being ridiculed for telling your non k-pop loving friends that you’re listening to something called “After School”…
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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