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