Best New Music, Part One

A ranking and review of the best new releases from Korean, Japanese, and Chinese artists!

View the Substack version of this piece here!

Catch up on the past two months’ best new releases with this multi-part series! First up: February’s Top Twenty!

#20: Lee Young Ji, “Robot”
This addictive earworm is relatable yet nonsensical! Lee Young Ji cosplays as a human and an ice hockey referee in the music video. Her silver, chrome heart is protected and disguised by a fuzzy, red covering, making it look like a generic heart-themed key chain. This explains why a hockey player simply pockets it like it is no big deal! The classic “locking eyes and falling for each other” moment has another twist when her crush’s stare and touch cause her to rust! Nevertheless, Lee Young Ji resumes refereeing duties, and this is just one of many examples of the “Robot” music video’s humor coming from what goes unacknowledged. The players do not bat an eye over their referee being a Tin Woman! Just as inexplicable is what happens when Lee Young Ji visits her friend’s auto shop for assistance, only to find out she is magnetic in addition to metallic! A wall of car repair tools surges towards the Tin Woman, yet viewers never see how or when those tools are removed. The tools are off by the time the video returns to the hockey rink setting, where yet another inexplicable twist occurs. After Lee Young Ji’s crush crashes, her chrome heart falls out of his pocket. It starts to glow, re-enters Lee Young Ji, and turns her into a cartoon character for a moment, as its warm light fills her and she transforms back into looking like a human! Her crush’s teammates skate over to them and cheer on their flirtations, looking as unaffected by their referee’s transformation as they did by her prior rusty appearance!

No character in “Robot” is the logical-thinking one, and she applies robot-related terminology to both her crush (“You’re like the final glitch in my system;” “Don’t wanna wake up / From your rainbow error”) and to herself (singing about crushing making her feel “naked” and exposed, as well as like a malfunctioning machine)! She leans into the comedic potential in the phrases “Wear your heart on your sleeves” and “We were made for each other,” highlighting how absurd people act when lovestruck! “Robot” shows how love is a funny thing, and it takes full advantage of a silly premise and the suspended disbelief for which the music video format allows.

#19: indigo la End, “Kagura”
With strong cultural roots but a music video that plunges a universal “you” into the middle of the action, this single’s appeal is both broad and specific. The uneven song - with its on-a-whim tempo changes and pivots between severe whispering and less dire-sounding, more melodic moments - entertains audiences regardless of how culturally literate they are in the ritual performance style to which the title refers. One does not have to know which main type of Kagura is being paid homage to in the video (Odori, the faster form that represents a possessed state, as opposed to the Mai phase, which is slower and represents a pre-possessed phase) to be struck by its thrills! The video’s second-person point-of-view sustains suspense and unease. “You” ride shotgun after chasing down a thief carrying a big, black bag. “You” have to chase a very limber criminal, who stays several steps ahead of “you” when it comes to jumps and sprints. “You” scour rooms for what the thief might have taken. And at the end, “you” try to grab the thief, only for the thief to jump away at the last second. “You” fail after a thrilling chase, perhaps because “you” are blinded by greed. After all, lyrics include “I closed my eyes out of [reflex], although there was light I had to see.” 

There are many other ways to interpret this band’s applications of the “God Entertainment” concept, and there are many more facets to Kagura than what this overview mentions. But the song “Kagura” is an ideal starting point, convincing audiences to dig deeper into the context after being immersed in a chase! 

#18: Ado, “Vivarium”
Being alone with the internet and her thoughts scares Ado, but it masquerades as a safer bet compared to being in public. Most of the music video shows her hiding parts of her face and standing in the eye of the public storm, with blitzes of images and a blur of fast-moving passersby. Her salvation from the sensory bombardment and whirlwind speed of modern life is her computer room that doubles as a closet - her personal vivarium, in which she too is surveilled and stuck like a pet or an animal in an enclosure. Besides an underwater scene, the only place where Ado seems to find stability is in this self-imposed exile, an environment lit primarily just by the glow of her screen, where those who judge her are physically far. Yet even there, the uncertainties that plague the outside world find her, as represented by the sporadic appearances and disappearances of wardrobe pieces. Ado endlessly wrestles with who she should publicly present herself as, and instead of ever choosing, she just lets her animated avatar go out into “the real world” for her! She keeps her virtual self front-facing beyond this specific video, which explains why the ways she sings about an existential crisis feel deeply genuine. From negative self-talk and stream-of-consciousness, concerning comments in the form of urgent whispering, to piercing cries for help that reach jaw-dropping highs, Ado despairs over feeling like a “fraud” and crying in her closet/computer room. She sings about “endlessly dreaming of” who she could be as she stays stuck behind the keyboard, her fear eating away at her from the inside and keeping her “ideal image” of life “miles away.” That ideal is not getting any closer, as indicated by lyrics like “still… I set these clumsy fingertips to work again / Ostracized by someone’s words.” 

“Vivarium” is not just sung; it is performed, matching its tonal shifts and vocal limit-stretching to the edge-of-sanity state that touches on many related themes: the jarring disconnect between the hustle and bustle of modern life and the sudden quiet when one goes home to one’s personal “vivarium” at the end of the day; the overwhelming amount of possibilities and opinions thrown at people, making the validity of each one hard to decipher and extract; knowing what to keep as background noise versus what to tune into; and the surprising extent to which animals’ and plants’ self-made living situations resemble those of people.

#17: LIL LEAGUE from EXILE TRIBE, NEOMATIC
Colorful chaos is the name of LIL LEAGUE’s “neo” game from the start, with “LILMATIC” and its inventive interpolation of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” The album repackage actually benefits from only having this one new track on it, because “LILMATIC” and its corresponding music video deserve to leave the strongest impressions on new and old audiences alike.

For those who love LIL LEAGUE’s uncontainable enthusiasm, “Wonder Island” is the song for them; it is a top-of-lungs celebration with the energy of a “Grand Opening” ceremony. More universally palatable is the fast-paced, dance-themed “Youth Spark.” Other boisterous options include “Beat Loud,” with excessive R-rolling and drumming; and the laser-sound-filled, electro-industrial “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.” Those seeking a chiller groove will find “Homeboys” and “Forever Young ~Soranoshita~” to be more their style. The rest of the songs prove that LIL LEAGUE’s word choices are just as off-the-walls as their soundscapes! They incentivize going on a walk because there is a chance of seeing a UFO in “The Walk,” they praise “ragamuffin vibes” in “Manatsunohanabi,” and they explicitly say “The top priority is stimulation” in the two-in-one track “Shigeki-Saiyusen”!

NEOMATIC maintains a sense of rushed restlessness, making sure the sounds of youths’ adventures are not expressed without including the antsy feelings that come with them! The fickleness yet sense of urgency to experience anything and everything while they can is apparent in the music videos, too, and while it takes the form of setting and camera lens switches throughout “Shigeki-Saiyusen,” the switches are primarily sartorial in “LILMATIC.” Either way, this group stays the antithesis of self-conscious!

#16: gongwon, 0
This aching indie-rock EP sustains the strengths that gongwon showed off in her previous releases. She continues to hone a personal musical path, picking up new ideas as she goes without leaving any of them entirely behind. Her always-grounded sensibility keeps her emotional state as raw as ever, and as a result, the songs have an inherent intimacy. It is like she is offering listeners looks at her diary, one that is tear-stained, wrinkled from nervous page-clutching and/or tearing, and overall weathered - yet still a prized possession and source of catharsis.

The EP’s title speaks to who gongwon feels like: a “zero,” and her songs have the through-line of heartstring-tugging self-loathing. This differs from nihilism, and she sings about the inner strength and urge to carry on, lamenting not herself as much as the agony of being herself. She sees but cannot reach the bright side in “All of me”: “Fresh snow / Sparkling depression… green despair… I [want] to stay alive even like this.” She labels crying her secret “weapon” and repeats “It is all yours” before also repeating “It is all mine.” After that aggrievement over wanting to share emotional burdens to lighten her personal load, she finds comfort and terror in realizing who this other person lifting half of the load must be: her reflection. The “hero” she turns to for salvation is who stares back at her through the “Window.” This alters the interpretations of the following songs. The person she consoles in “Lullaby” and the person she wishes she was in “Can I Be You?” might actually be conversations with herself. (After all, “Can I Be You?” re-ups the “Tears are a weapon, not a weakness" mindset.)

The songs are about struggling to, yet still trying to, accept herself as she is. She compares her growing-up journey to a moldy “Flower,” and she ends with only a semi-ending via “Interlude.” It speaks to the “still far from achieved” status of her “love myself” goal, as notes are stretched out and end without any sense of true finality. Elsewhere on the EP, other instrumental subtleties channel gongwon’s state of moving but not briskly, in some moments trudging forward with heavier baggage than others. 

#15: sumika, Honto
This rock band fully embraces a “seize the day” mentality, encouraging people to make opportunities where they see none and to recognize they are often subconsciously the ones standing in their own ways. Furthermore, they show the positive ripple effects of manifesting a good time for all. In the “Honto” video, an extended family that lives under a single roof makes it feel like nonstop playtime, and the longer they go on, the more magical their babysitting games become! For example, they go from pretending it is raining by holding a hose above the youngest family member’s umbrella to that little girl’s umbrella causing her to levitate! The merry mood-booster is about expanding what is deemed possible, rebranding being “in the blue” as being in the “sparkling blue” phase of a “dazzling journey”! They preach taking life as it comes with a smile: “You’re fine just the way you are;” “If you feel like laughing, laugh / If you feel like crying, cry;” “If it’s too scary, let’s hold hands / If you feel like wandering, wander / If you feel like stopping, stop;” “Rather than being number one / Let’s live right / If you feel like going, go / If you feel like moving forward, move.” They generate good times through seeing what is “lucky” as dependent on how they “shine,” “stretch,” and “shrink” those good-luck charms. In short, they argue that being happy and lucky is a choice.

Radical acceptance and radical optimism remain twins on the B-sides, making the EP overall sound like a persuasive “Look on the Bright Side” presentation! “Blue” is like the partner song of “Honto,” about loving right here and now, even if things are “still blue.” “Sekishunka” has airs of wistfulness, but it stays sounding upbeat in its own mellow way, as they sing about a future that will surely brighten. Lastly, “Cradle of ressentiment,” to paraphrase, reminds people, “Risks come with rewards, don’t forget that part!” “It’s not okay, but… let me do my best” is directly said at one point and repeated in as many words throughout the musical pep talk.

#14: YEL, “Narcissist”
“Narcissist” is an insightful admission that none are immune from the toxic compulsion to go from dominated to dominating when given the chance.

The music video goes back and forth between live-action and animated scenes. In the live-action ones, a ballerina performs with a statuesque expression; the sole instance in which her composure slips is when a single tear slides down one cheek. 

The sketch-like animated scenes feature two main characters, one with a purely round head and one with a round head that is pointy on top. The pointy-headed one welcomes the round-headed one over for dinner, during which the latter feels like something is off (despite not specifically noticing the former twists the wind-up piece in the latter’s back). He even tries to bolt at one point, but the fake-smile-flashing host coaxes him back to the table and insists he should relax. Still sensing something is wrong here, the guest attacks the host before the host can do more harm to him, and he stabs and kills him (which appears as a pixelated, censored image only!). He gets short-term satisfaction from burying his would-be killer, tossing him in a shallow grave in which he looks like a torn teddy bear. “Who’s the toy now?,” he must be thinking! But the joke is still on him: He returns to the scene where it happened, bloodied back (from where the wind-up piece came off) unmissable, and stares into a full-length mirror. His head suddenly molds to form a point on top. He puts on the deceased’s crown, and the mirror shatters. The video ends with him walking down the street with someone new - a new victim, perhaps? - who has a square box for a head but otherwise an identical appearance - just like how this bait-turned-killer initially resembled his potential killer in all ways but head shape. He becomes his foe, forced to reckon with the many things he and the one he loathed the most have in common. YEL sings about this frightening realization: “What you wanted and what I wanted were the same things in the end.” Once terror of who she proves to be easily capable of becoming sinks in, her later lyrics sound like denial: “There was no way what you wanted and what I wanted were the same.” “From the very beginning, the crown was too much for you” and “I was not the one who made it this way” further sound like desperate attempts to keep her distance from the one she considers evil. That person might just be herself, as represented by her dance moves that mimic the killer’s (for example, she crawls on the ground in a way that mirrors the crawling the cartoon character does when reaching for his wind-up piece).

“Narcissist” initially makes viewers wholly root for the round-headed party guest, but his violent retaliation complicates that support. It would be easier to have never gotten emotionally invested in either character, not just to avoid moral and emotional tension, but to keep a blind eye pertaining to how much one’s self resembles both the antagonist and protagonist. The ballerina demonstrates this desire to - but eventual futility of trying to - block out all feelings, and it makes for a performance as arresting as the vocal one.

#13: MISAMO, PLAY
This talented trio tops off their trilogy on a high, concluding the “art about art itself” eras with one last hurrah. While the Masterpiece and HAUTE COUTURE eras focused on static art forms, PLAY focuses on the performing arts. They describe their behavior as editing a script in real time (in “Confetti,” “Deep Eden,” and “Catch My Eye”), they allude to that framing with dual definitions (for example, on “Turning Tables,” MINA mentions needing “a reboot”), and they take their show on the go in the “Confetti” music video. The sumptuous setups range from a rabbit-starring comedy show to a dark Wonderland, complete with dancing shadows and skeletons! Plenty of time is spent on solo spectacles as well. In “Confetti,” each member wears a costume offering a glimpse at what she would look like starring in her own movie (MOMO in a spy thriller, MINA in a sci-fi flick, and SANA in a swashbuckling adventure), and they each do their own thing on a solo B-side. MOMO shows off with a whistle-laced hook and saucy rapping about being “your new obsession” in “Kitty;” SANA smiles through polished pop and lyrics like “This shine is born, not bought” in “Ma Cherry;” and MINA denounces haters through a jazzy delivery in “Turning Tables,” saying, “To see me leveling up, guess that really hit a nerve,” and, “They go and hate, but is it envy?”

Besides the “work of art” theme, what keeps the connection among parts of this trilogy is an insistence on representing a united front. Like in “Identity,” which featured an engraving of the trio, and “Do not touch,” which ended with them posing in a shared picture frame, this era’s videos represent MISAMO’s strong sisterhood. This time, they team up in a mini-movie-style album trailer that is a cross between a fairy tale and beauty pageant. The host of this hybrid announces there will be one performer named the “Queen of MISAMO,” and the losers will be turned into mice by cat-mask-wearing judges! But the members disarm the judge with a magic wand, ask “Who’s the unlucky one now?,” and intimidate the announcer into letting them all be winners! Meanwhile, snippets of MISAMO’s new songs are cleverly woven into the plot: “Hmm” is teased during the talent show judges’ deliberations, new solo songs are part of solo audition scenes, and “Not a Goodbye” plays at the end as all three take their crowns!

PLAY is full of musical and visual delights that all go back to one main message: each MISAMO member deserves her own director’s chair!

#12: HANA, HANA
This girl group’s name means “rose” in Japanese, and sure enough, this self-titled album shows them blossoming. HANA’s first single, “Drop,” starts the album upfront: “[D]on’t want to be a worthless copycat… the stage needs me.” A pitch rise and new instrumental twists in “ROSE” make for a more memorable emphasis of the same message - not to mention a more memorable way of imitating haters and doubters (“What? She bloomed? No, probably dead by now”)! After doubling down on determination to prove haters wrong in “ROSE,” they go further and call themselves superior in “NON STOP” (“Watch my dreams from down below”). They apply their assertive stance to a relationship in “Burning Flower” (“come here and kiss me on my hand… You know my name”) and “My Body” (“I know you can’t control me… Even if you were my sweet honey… It’s my body”). And they pick themselves up in “Cold Night” (“For every time I’ve fallen… I’ve got nothing but this fire;” “I’ll show you what I can do”). The most stubborn post-breakup scorcher is “BAD LOVE,” which goes off of the “I deserve better” message and mentions an off-balance prior power dynamic that they see the wrongness of in hindsight (“I cannot forgive you… I’m just a kid”). The new 2026 songs meaningfully reinforce HANA’s mantra of self-worth, pride, and finding their inner power that makes them immune to external influences. These messages continue to be reaffirmed in versatile ways: “Bloom” is a pop crowd-pleaser, rapping and rugged guitars drive “ALL IN,” and the new studio cut of “Tiger - HANA with HONEYs Ver.” shows team spirit and sentimentality.

It is not wrong to summarize this album as one song building on top of another, but that construction is sometimes horizontal instead of vertical. This is not a generic story of learning how to see one’s inner value; it’s a story about some of the many pros and cons - the “petals” and “thorns” - that come from refusing to shrink or flatten that inner essence. They don’t gain confidence over time; they demonstrate just how many ways that confidence can turn from talk into action! In other words, this is not a story of going from zero to 100 in terms of confidence, but a story of testing the sturdiness of that 100-percent baseline. The fire inside of HANA is lit from the outset - and made literal via rings of fire in the “Burning Flower” video! (Another symbol made literal is HANA’s blossoming: “Drop” features each member stepping on a flower, and the video ends with the flower re-growing between cracks in the floor.) 

Speaking of HANA’s music videos, they run the gamut from dystopian (“ROSE”) to gritty (“ALL IN”), from an action-packed rescue mission (“BAD LOVE”) to the simple premise of casual hangouts (in the video for their best song, “Blue Jeans”). However, there is one key constant: HANA call the shots. They star in their own shows, each dancing in their own television in “Cold Night;” taking their show on the go in “NON STOP;” refusing to give paparazzi the hoped-for shots in “Burning Flower;” and acting completely ready to go despite mismatched clothes, wet hair, and smudged makeup in “My Body.”

#11: NCT JNJM, BOTH SIDES
There are three keys to making a duality-based comeback work: entertainment value that injects new life into the been-there-done-that premise, a plot beyond just duality for duality’s sake, and at least one collectively connective component. In other words, if the theme is going to be “duality,” the era needs to avoid dullness, reductiveness, and a lack of an actual rhyme or reason for its perceived randomness. By this rubric, NCT JNJM pass the test! Whether acting or just singing, their charisma is the unwavering variable, and the predictability stops there.

Some songs have much more going on than others, with hooting and hollering punctuating “BOTH SIDES,” constant self-interruptions in “What It Is,” and saxophone disruptions in “WIND UP,” while the other tracks stick to a chiller vibe. Video-wise, there are also more than face-value similarities and differences; attention to details changes the bigger pictures.

The first in a series of “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style concept videos involves a coin toss, and whether JAEMIN and JENO act like friends or foes depends on that outcome. The only certainty is that their fates will depend on this coin toss, as foreshadowed by both of them holding a coin in their separate rooms. Their characters’ dynamic also stays in flux in the other videos. JAEMIN’s teasing takes the form of juvenile pranks and good-natured giggling in some scenes, while he hits JENO with a “Don’t you dare; I’m dead serious” expression in others. JENO’s tolerance for JAEMIN’s trouble-starting ebbs and flows, with JENO enabling some of the hijinks in the title track’s music video but looking determined to get JAEMIN to knock it off in videos like “NCT JNJM ‘BOTH SIDES’ Mood Film : WHICH ONE IS YOUR BEST SIDE?”!

Regardless of JAEMIN’s and JENO’s characteristics throughout the video series, an equal mano-a-mano stance remains. They size each other up and speak volumes through locked eyes and arm gestures, intuitively anticipating one another’s motivations and impulses. Their relationship is not yin-and-yang, and their flaws do not cancel each other out, so their personalities chaotically collide! They both have to learn the same lessons, and they do so the hard way in the main music video. One of those lessons: Not everyone will instantly fall in love with them! They go over-the-top to get the attention of the one person in the hotel who ignores them, to no avail. They are befuddled by her disinterest, yet they would have been less surprised had they looked around more closely. The hotel patrons do seem starstruck over them, but there are subtle signs they grow weary of JNJM’s antics. For example, a blink-and-miss-it moment shows one poolside tourist reading a magazine titled ENOUGH! Another brief moment shows a tourist’s manicure, with the letter on each nail coming together to spell out “I DON’T CARE”! 

This duo cannot take a hint, so they have to be literally hit in the face with a humbling truth, and the video ends with them running into a door that is closed in their faces! They fall down and appear flat, as if just part of the hotel carpeting’s pattern!

In short, BOTH SIDES and its videos bring witty weirdness to a self-explanatory topic that needed it.

Read the rest here!

Catch up on previous “Best of” rankings and reviews for each month and year here!