It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
You know Rescene have been gaining popularity lately when they’re starting to get into the same kind of pointless “are they right wing? oh noes” controversies that typically only plague A-list groups.
RESCENE – Pretty Girl
For some reason I thought that I’d already looked at this pointlessly identical cover of an old KARA song, but I guess I was thinking of another recent pointlessly identical cover of an old KARA song. Oh well, I guess if you wanna cover KARA, every wanna cover KARA.
YOUNG POSSE – Mr 2026
I should be grateful anyway. At least Rescene didn’t do to “Pretty Girl” what Young Posse just did to “Mr“. Nobody wanted this 2010s-style Autotunification.
QWER – Show Down
The rocking image mrs but the sound isn’t quite keeping up. Heavy distortion way in the background, vocals way too far forward, not even any guitar solo… not sure what makes them think this will work with the Japanese rock market. They do look great though so maybe that’ll get them over the line over there, we’ll see.
QWER – Our Voyage
Their other song is actually better. I’m unsure what Woori of Teen Teen has got to do with anything here, but I will calmly accept.
MEOVV – In my hands
Another song to add to the many in 2026 that had promise but really should have kept the pace up all the way through instead of leaving it to just the chorus only. So many missed opportunities for bangers this year.
UAU – Tuesday
Tuesday isn’t a particularly interesting day of the week and so it suits this song quite well.
HEART OF WOMAN – Close To Me
Heart Of Woman are back with yet another track that should have been left as the album filler material that it was probably originally supposed to be before someone had the boneheaded idea to just throw money down the drain making videos for the whole damn album.
Dodree – Seasonal Love Letters
Dodree have some good stuff but this isn’t it, it’s a little bit too close to the music it’s drawing inspiration from to actually be notable.
Jihyo, Shenseea, Fandom – Distant Lover
You’d be hard pressed to notice that Jihyo was even in this crap at all, and that’s probably just as well for everybody.
Raina feat. Jae Woo An – Loving You
Somewhere there’s an alternative universe where peace and love reigns supreme and Orange Caramel survived the 2010s intact and are the biggest pop group alive today. Unfortunately for us, we’re stuck in the world where corruption rules the world’s most powerful countries and Raina is best known as a duet ballad singer.
Yves – It
They were onto something good at the end of this song where the strings break comes in, but it doesn’t last long enough and the rest of the song is relatively bland and washed-out, just like the lame “visualiser” video that barely even scrapes roundup eligibility.
Yeojin – Quiet Yes
Speaking of bloodthirsty psychos, Yeojin wants to murder all of you. Just because she can. She’s only singing by the river because she’s checking that the bodies she disposed of aren’t coming back up to the surface. How people are missing this I have no idea, she must be paying off a heap of police with that stolen Blockberry credit card.
Lim Kim feat. Bree Runaway – Insa
Lazy-ass “visualisers” like this generally aren’t eligible for roundup at all but I just thought it was notable that Lim Kim is edging slightly towards investigating actual music again here.
Yeonjun – Ice Cream
Starts off promisingly with a groove similar to Shocking Blue’s “Love Buzz” but sadly most topline writers who work in Korean pop aren’t that good and that’s where this one falls over.
NCT WISH – YO-I-DON!
This Japanese language song is just a little too Japanese for its own good, leaning into the same fast but tinny beats and lame melody that sabotages almost 100% of j-pop. Yo I don want this song.
Super Junior-83z – Promise
Hey it’s your favourite Christian horse boys… a Super Junior subunit? Hey we’re starved of good songs in this style, we’ll take it! They should have added Siwon to this group for authenticity, talk about him missing his calling.
idnnt – Kids Return
It’s always the k-pop videos that don’t need them that have the epilepsy seizure warnings. Right now the T-ara video director is being cancelled on MV-editing TikTok for what he did to our eyes all those years ago, while screaming “nobody ever told me, it was a different time, man”.
WOOAH – Summer
There’s nothing all that special here but nothing awful either. Which always puts me in an awkward spot because it’s so much easier to either gush about a song or make some joke about how it sucks. They’re probably doing it just to annoy me.
RIIZE – D-D-Done
Some pretty cool sonic ideas here but a lamely repetitive chorus hook makes this song more annoying than it is anything else. You’ll be d-d-done caring about this song soon enough.
AHOF – Run To You
Definitely one of this week’s better songs, mind you it hasn’t been a great week, but I appreciate any effort in the right direction honestly.
TRENDZ – On My Knees
Another decent boy song, it looks like the guys have a lot of the better songs this week. Catchy and pacy, we want more of this in k-pop please.
AEN – Focus On Me
You ordered SHINee’s “View” off Alibiba and this is what arrived.
AmbiO – Blue Splash
All those people who keep sending me pictures of some girl in one of those Japanese sailor/school uniform hybrid things and wondering why I don’t give a shit, just look at how awful these boys look in the same kind of getup. This isn’t Tintinpopalypse you cunts.
VAYONN – Where My Youth Lives
Everyone’s by the water this week. Don’t swim out too far kids, or you might find one of Yeojin’s floating body bags.
dearAlice – Body On
I might shit on DearAlice but fans should be grateful for the attention – an appearance on kpopalypse.com is more promo than their actual label seems to be doing.
Kim Riwon – Stay Together
All six girls from CLASSy had a solo song this week but I’m just going to put Riwon’s song here because it’s the only notable one. Not sure why they chose to make her sit down for the whole of a song that actually has a fair bit of energy to it because she really looks like she wants to get up and move around a bit, but hey props to the label for at least not exhausting her, maybe she had a bad foot or something and they’re just being OH&S compliant.
Kihyun – So Good
Commander, we shot down the UFO containing Kihyun before he started signing his shiftful screechy ballad, but we’re afraid that he survived the crash and escaped and he’s now wandering the countryside endangering the citizens. Don’t worry sir, we’ll bring him in soon!
V8 – Girlsnboys
It’s good that the Ferrari turns up right at the start of the video, it’s a great warning to just turn the fucking thing off. If you’re not shredding I don’t want to see a sports car in your music video, end of story.
Rob Scallion ft. Michael Angelo Batio – Keys To The Lamborghini
Okay this is sports-car-worthy. This video can be the non-Korean pick of the week and has lore which requires a bit of explaining. Michael Angelo Batio is now in Manowar but first came to attention in the music world in an amusingly over the top hair metal group called Nitro in the 1980s. His “Speed Kills” instructional guitar video was a big influence on players like Tosin Abasi and also a young Kpopalypse (much more so than his band’s actual music). In the video he famously told players “I’m going to give you the keys to the Lamborghini” as he demonstrated incredible ambidexterity and ultra-fast techniques that were decades ahead of what guitar players were accomplishing at that time. And Rob Scallion is just some guitar YouTube guy and he’s okay I guess and he likes MAB so he can’t be too bad.
Jaehyun – 99 Degrees
How bored are you right now? Prepare to be even more bored if you press play.
Juniel – Summer Scean
Juniel seems like a nice girl, if she wants to run any English spelling over Kpopalypse for checking before she releases new music she should go right ahead and drop me an ask or whatever.
Cooing – 4 in, 6 out
I’ll leave you with this mid-paced song which is quite good actually and has a nice video. Hey I’m not being a cunt for a change. Don’t worry it won’t last.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
pursoz – Don’t hurt yourself…
I’ll keep the non-cuntiness going for just a little longer. Bang Chan knows that he probably has a lot of followers going through hard times, and so do I. To the person who did a massive trauma dump on my contact form and told me not to read it, I didn’t reply deliberately but I hope you’re okay. That’s all. I don’t mind if you do that stuff, if it helps you. If you are having trouble with negative thoughts just know you can talk to Kpopalypse instead, or ask me shit, or join the livestreams or whatever. I can’t promise that I can fix anything, in fact I know I definitely can’t, but hey it might give you a distraction, or just something healthier to pass the time with. Do it if you feel that you need to do it.
Okay that’s enough, back to our regularly scheduled program. Lisa isn’t just upsetting the Christians as we saw the other week, now she’s upsetting the sportball fans too, which is great. Listen to this woman talk about how sportball is about “coming together” or some shit, more like it’s about coming together and getting traumatised. I still get PTSD whenever I see a black pentagon on a white background. Anyway while Lisa’s body is hardly my type I’d still rather that the World Cup be about Lisa’s body than about the World Cup, so Lisa has definitely gone up in my estimation lately, I can see that I’m going to have to start stanning. Maybe even a positive post at this rate.
So Yu Jin – Para Para Queen
K-pop used to be fast, people just don’t remember. Everything that is old is new again. And then old again a few years later. Enjoy the uptempo songs we’re getting now while it lasts.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
