Best of April 2026 (Part 2)

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

View the Substack version of this piece here!

Catch up on part one here!

#10: adieu, adieu 5
This down-to-earth diary hits close to home for anyone and everyone with love on the brain. The singer-songwriter focuses more on what it means to be in love than love itself, reliving the thrill of jumping into a lover’s arms, the distraught state of having texts go unanswered, and the dam-breaking moment when a relationship’s cracks become too obvious to shove into one’s subconscious any longer. She sings about all these sensations and then some, with relatively minimalistic, guitar and drum-featuring instrumentals that keep attention on her relatable words and evolving emotional state.

She works through stages of post-breakup grief, but she ends back at stage one. In “Genki?,” she seeks to uphold the image in her mind of her ex-lover on a perfect pedestal: “You remain exactly as you were that day / And I remain exactly as I am… Is it okay if I keep you here… just like this?” She knows the answer is “no” and that time waits for no one; they are drifting apart, and there is nothing she can do about that: “The same amount of time has passed for both of us / Yet here we are, in two completely different places…” That comes across in “naiteshimaisou,” too: “Sparks flew… I feel like I’m about to cry;” “I have to pull myself together… bid farewell to the time that can never return.” 

“blue hour” meaningfully marks when her interpretation of what it means to “take flight” shifts. She has seen romance as the key to feeling like she is flying and sings about doing so in the first few songs, but she realizes flying can be associated in her mind with post-breakup freedom instead. To fly, she doesn’t need a partner; she needs this time and space to come into her own: “I was looking at the sky… dancing the waltz at dawn alone;” “Now, I’m just feeling it quietly… sadness and love.” 

She starts to enjoy her own company in “Night Bird,” seeing her interior world as a newly-vast space to hold new memories and abilities. On the other hand, her former lover’s influence remains: “syokubutuen” is about a botanical garden her former lover told her is located at the end of a certain road, so she keeps walking despite never seeing it come into view. This metaphor for clinging to a piece of the past yet still moving forward is not because adieu feels ready to do so, but because she does not. She knows she needs to get herself mentally unstuck. She parts with her “old friend” that is “stagnation”: “I'll live on, forgetting you / Passing through the words of goodbye… My favorite song.” “syokubutuen” features “la la la”s, just like “naiteshimaisou,” a song about keeping her feet planted in the past. She transfers the breezy buzz of a relationship to one that can exist in her newly-single life.

She ends with “Untitled,” which paraphrases the “Please don’t change” wish she makes to her former lover in “Genki?” She pledges to “go on singing of love” and uses a rainy-day metaphor about the balance between valuing the past and parting with it: “I raise my umbrella / Navigating the drops… I don't need so much that I become waterlogged / But please, let me be nourished just enough.” She recognizes, “The more I dwell on it, the more paralyzed I become / The more I struggle, the more I’m sent back to the start,” so she tries to stop struggling and to start letting go.

This EP is about moving on, but more importantly and cathartically, it’s about why that is so hard to do.

#9: Yves, NAIL
The “NAIL” music video is a more natural outgrowth of past Yves eras than it first seems. Back in the “LOOP” era, Yves alternated between the role of a leader and someone running and hiding from the public eye. In the “Viola” video, she sang about needing all kinds of space: liminal (which she was in while digital eyes stayed focused on her), metaphorical, and physical (which the lyrics were about, as she wished to go somewhere too small and enclosed for anyone to follow her, like a viola case!). “LOOP” and “Viola” were not about Yves breaking free, but at least gaining some control over her position within a “loop.” That craving for control took a dark turn in the “Ex Machina” video, although outfit changes and role reversals left it unclear if Yves was the main character worth fearing. Her openness to turning to violence if necessary to recreate a former relationship dynamic spoke to her unhealthy sense of attachment and deep insecurities about who she was outside of the context of someone else. The “running and hiding” pattern is bound to continue as long as she wants the feeling of control more than the feeling of stable confidence and independence. The endless pursuit is exhausting, though! And it explains the direction several previous EPs took, starting with the higher-energy and faster tracks before growing more lethargic. It sounded as if Yves went from active to passive participant in her own life. This succumbing shows itself anew in NAIL, through hyper-pop-ready, high-pitched vocals that stick to a lower-than-expected tempo, as well as through repetition that reinforces the sense of being stuck. Yves remains content playing a character at the margins - like the street cat she sang about wanting to be instead of a pampered indoor cat in the Soft Error song “White cat”! What ultimately ties past and present Yves eras together is this off-center role. Her inscrutable character is always addressing some form of attachment: to her own identity, to others, to her career… Yves wonders what she is willing and not willing to compromise and to what degree her attachments are good versus toxic.

The mind games that Yves plays in the “NAIL” music video underline her desire to stay at a remove, not taking complete accountability for her actions and keeping her motives a mystery. She is a possessed character who tortures people and generally disrupts their lives in ways that favor slow deliberation over flashy, fast reflexes, as if when she puts them under her control, she too is doing so under someone else’s command. She crawls around indoors and moves as if sleepwalking down the street outdoors. Her final thoughts on the EP I Did come across as more ominous in hindsight, because in “NAIL,” she is implied to have killed everyone in a dim dining room. In the I Did song “DIM,” she talked about “the silence growing on the floor” and “slipping out of control.” “DIM” is also newly relevant for mentioning feeling “lost in the dark” and “fading fast like a flame.” Now, in “NAIL,” she sings about basking in a “slow glow,” and being “born in [her] own light” in “birth.” Yves feels stuck whenever her inconsistent inner flame disappears, and that presents itself through methodical pacing and a coercive compulsion (“I’m going to free up your mind. You like it,” she insists in “NAIL”).

NAIL is an apt analogy for this era, because as Yves hammers down her multi-lane musicality that exhausts the bounds of “alternative” - alt-R&B meets alt-pop meets alt-hyper-pop - she plays with the screws she purposefully keeps loose in that foundation - loose screws with which her video personas thrive! 

#8: DPR IAN, “THE SHOW”
DPR IAN remains allergic to genre and format constraints, making this song somehow sound like just one song, two in one, and three in one! It is just one song about showtime, but it sounds like two in one when it pivots partway through into emphasizing a bass-driven groove over theatrics. And the “three songs in one” descriptor is apt if also considering the prelude to “THE SHOW,” the intro track “Burn.” “Burn” is also several things at once, a complete (albeit abbreviated) song in isolation and one that is linked to “THE SHOW.” It completes a thought - “Why don’t we figure it out? / Before we… burn it to the ground?” - but leaves no time for a response, as if he and the listeners are abruptly cut off and swept into the spectacle that is the following track. Further avant-garde entertainment comes from a music video that refuses to sacrifice comedic moments for dramatic ones or vice versa. The backup dancers in elaborate period costumes exaggerate different reactions, as if they are reading from different scripts. “THE SHOW” makes a more layered statement than just “Everyone’s in their own worlds,” though. It fits into DPR IAN’s ongoing musical universe and is particularly worth a closer look when reassessing the “Welcome to the Show” video.

A brief refresher: DPR IAN’s musical world involves several alter egos, the main ones being MITO, Mr. Insanity, and at least one to-be-revealed hybrid of sorts. MITO stars in “Welcome to the Show,” and a “hybrid” appears to star in “THE SHOW.” First of all, IAN’s appearance is different in “THE SHOW.” He has bright red hair and a glam-rock ensemble, departures from both the uber-bright Mr. Insanity and the dark and disheveled look of MITO. Second of all, the chronology is different. In “Welcome to the Show,” MITO enters an empty auditorium (through white doors) at the beginning and makes his way towards the spotlit stage, eventually performing there. In “THE SHOW,” IAN enters an empty auditorium (through dark doors) after his performance, at the end of the music video, in a dark suit that contrasts with the red velvet worn by MITO. Furthermore, “Welcome to the Show” features a series of flashbacks in quick succession, and it begins with a framed picture of what happens in the video. In other words, there is already a framed memory of what he is about to do. He says, “I feel like I’ve been here before. Everything feels familiar…” “THE SHOW” also unfolds like it could be past-to-present or present-to-past. Besides entering the auditorium after “showtime,” the title screen doesn’t pop up until the middle of the video, and the “ending credits” play soon after the title.

There is also a shade of Mr. Insanity here, because like the chapters in which that alter ego is the star, “THE SHOW” inverts concepts like “climax” and “rising action.” One possibility is that this is the start of a new show, one coming out of the metaphorical ashes of the old ones. Perhaps IAN is going back to where the story started. Another possibility is that everything preceding “THE SHOW” video was a mere dress rehearsal - some “rising action.”  Now is when the real show actually begins! Then again, “THE SHOW” is characterized as a home base, like a place for resolution. As he says at the start of “THE SHOW” video, “There is a place where I often go not to disappear, but to search deep below. When the past returns to burn my soul... What I go through… Most will never know. But I don’t really mind. As long as you make it back… To the show.” It is worth flagging the “make it back” framing, because in “Famous Last Words,” IAN narrates a letter to Mr. Insanity: “[T]ime is running out… But don’t worry. I’ll find a way to come back. I always do.”

IAN, Mr. Insanity, MITO, a new hybrid… whoever is in “The Show,” the bottom line is that the venue for it carries a magnetic mystique, always drawing him back into it. Many more paragraphs could be spent unpacking this, but the point is that DPR IAN raises questions about the performative nature of life that are striking in their strangeness and subversion.

#7: Novelbright, PYRAMID
With a primarily sunny disposition and a firm commitment to keeping the faith - in themselves, in their loved ones, in their futures - this rock band has something important for people from all walks of life to hear. They begin with a question that is, to paraphrase, “Why do we try?” Their aspirations seem forever out-of-reach: “So vast and never-ending / I wonder how long this journey… will continue… Is there any hope?” But they decide that “Falling down seven times and getting up eight is fine;” they do not give up on the “caravan ride” towards their dreams. 

The album goes on to give answers to “Why do we try?” “We do it for love” is the answer in the older song “Ivy” (about a romance that goes in no direction other than deeper), the older song “Canopus”(“You were the one who transformed all my anger and tears into laughter”), and the new songs “Live, Laugh, Love” and “Transparent.” “Live Laugh Love” is about every day feeling ten times rosier thanks to getting to see a loved one grow up, and “Transparent” is about the moment of realizing an emotional border has been crossed, and love has stopped disguising itself as hate.

“We do it for the memories” is their answer in the older song “Everywhere I Go” and the 2026 songs “Anemone” and “Kanzashi.” All three are about being hung up on trying to preserve the past.

“We do it for a better, brighter future” is their answer in the older song “Winding Road” (“Through that endless repetition / True treasures are born”), the older song “Call me” (“Even if it’s still incomplete right now / The future will greet us with a smile”), 2026’s “Mystery” (which shares the older songs’ message about the need to put one foot in front of the other), and the album’s last track. “No matter what happens, I want you to keep looking forward,” they say in the new song “IF.” 

The hope that persistence pays off relates to what otherwise sounds like an outlier on the album: “Chasing blood.” They sing, “You’re running and running from the morning light / Draining me dry, like a sweet parasite / Does it ever fill the void inside?,” and “I hope you are really proud of the person you’ve become / Wearing my pain like a crown.” The biggest dividing line between them and their haters is the same one dividing people who are living with a greater sense of purpose and people who are not. That difference is who is chasing something versus running towards something, and Novelbright lead the way on the latter.

PYRAMID combines older and brand-new songs to show how hindsight has insights for the future, and they glean those insights through an accessible caravan metaphor.

#6: T.O.P, TOP SPOT - ANOTHER DIMENSION
The best metaphor for T.O.P’s new era is a library bookshelf that keeps the most popular titles on the higher rows and the least-checked-out ones on the lower ones. T.O.P gravitates towards telling his eye-level stories and would rather avoid the ones that are purposefully less convenient to retrieve. He is inclined to tell the stories that the most people want to hear, which are not the same as the stories that he would personally benefit the most from letting out of his busy mind and onto the sheet music. What allows him to do both at once are deployments of two powerful tools: analogy and comedy. 

While addressing his past on his own terms, he packages the stories in the guise of “just joking” and “It’s not who or what it sounds like,” with liberal usage of onomatopoeia and ad libs; the relegation of some memories to those of an alter ego, like his “Moon Man” persona, or a famous artist he sees himself as comparable to; and the matching of his most honest takes with the most unserious demeanors. In “BE SOLID,” as he admits he wishes he were a more “warm and cozy” person, his voice sounds stuck in digital muck, like he is a machine using the last of its power. In “SELF CRUCIFIXION,” he talk-raps in an uber-deep voice about the “nauseating” news cycle that gives him a “scarlet letter,” samples a TikTok about being “99% angel,” and concludes with a montage of negative news clips about himself. The extra-deep voice returns and endures constant self-interjections in “SEOUL CHAOS,” which describes his status in Seoul as precarious (“If you fall, you’re just chunks of meat”) yet maybe not - perhaps just the stuff of a fever dream, with “pink-winged elephants and squirrels with spinning eyes”! The spaceship noises during “ZERO-COKE” and “Another Dimension Holy Dude!!!!!!!!” dilute the credibility of the loneliness he says he has in the former and the “Pandora’s Box” of emotional baggage he says he has in the latter. And in “FOR FANS,” he plays the “expected” part of a K-pop idol, sounding perky and responding to his name being chanted, but it is during that perceived joy that he lets out a secret: “I’m scared of getting bored, scared of myself.”

T.O.P finds many other ways to get his real feelings across under the guise of goofiness, and these feelings often have to do with his time in BIGBANG and desire to keep that in the past. Given the band name, it sounds like a reference to the group when he comments on being “just cosmic dust” in “THE GIANT,” celebrating being “finally off the grid.” “A SMALL, FILTHY SHOW WINDOW” stresses that he appreciates his time in the group but is glad it is over: “It’s beautiful when we go our separate ways;” “I loved my old days in BIGBANG” (emphasis added). He again insists he is “done playing the clown” and “had a nightmare chasing that high,” which could refer back to the “I’m so high” lyric in “SEOUL CHAOS” (that is also the primary chorus lyric in the BIGBANG subunit song “High High”). 

Like how the album gets the most vulnerable when it also seems the most absurd, “STENDHAL SYNDROME” involves both a lot of hedging and a lot of head-on statements. He compares his story to those of famous artists like Ed Ruscha (whose work he cleverly mentions by using the phrase “that was then, this is now”!), but he gets real about how much of an “outcast” he has felt like, while also feeling the weight of paparazzi’s gazes (“The lights [that] busily follow the actor”). He also underhandedly reveals he is talking about himself when he mentions needing a “new tempo;” Tempo was his pre-BIGBANG rapper name.

T.O.P’s hodgepodge approach to telling his story on his own terms is a fascinating look into an inexplicable musical mind.

#5: LiSA, LACE UP
LiSA keeps each element one of surprise, like she’s playing with lit matches and never knows when each one will strike! She dips into and out of nostalgia (with Easter eggs), folklore (often involving dark descriptions), and songs with the goal of simply shouting from the rooftops (with lots of fast-paced pop-rock). These songs scream “life in the fast lane,” and besides taking life by the handlebars, LiSA insists on living it up in an extra “DIY” way! “DECOTORA15” is about “Adding color to even those lonely roads,” by treating marking days on a calendar like a game of connect-the-dots! “HOMEdayo” describes attachments as turning into “badges.” Relatedly, the last song celebrates living a custom-tailored life, like “A colorful dream, the patchwork walk of this era”! Treating life as a fun art project is a fun twist on the “turn pain into fuel” mantra! “The pain inside us / Should never go away,” she insists in “ReawakeR.” That pain becomes useful and is an essential color in the palette of life. “Decorate with every emotion,” she encourages in “DECOTORA15,” so that it can look like a “masterpiece”! Celebrating all of life’s highs and lows is the primary theme: “Even my scars are lovely” (“QUEEN”), “I want to live every day without regrets” (“HOMEdayo”), “It’s beautiful to be alive” (“Shine in the Cruel Night”), “I don’t need sloppy pessimism” (“Shouted Serenade”), “This world is overflowing with miracles” (“HELLO WORLD”), “Treasure or junk? Flip it over. It’s easy!” (“Shadow”)... the list goes on.

Whether singing about living with both her head in the clouds and her feet on the ground or casting herself in the role of a supernatural force, each song shines or spooks thanks to LiSA’s signature spunk!

#4: Chevon, San Sha San You
This eclectic Japanese band loves to play games with the audience, keeping it up-in-the-air exactly who and what on Earth they are talking about or alluding to in their songs! The songs distort the sense of past versus present, which is not even in the top three on the list of their music’s most puzzling parts! Each song is big and bold in its own ways, with cramped instrumental arrangements and words that tumble over each other. It is always “go big or go home” time, whether summoning a choir (like in “DUA•RHYTHM”) or breaking out of an orchestral mold into something more stomp-along and stadium-ready (like in “B.O.A.T.”). They do not always gallop at full speed, though that is more often than not the case. They lower the tempo for “Sayonara, Irene,” “Love rut,” “The Art of Being Wrong,” and “Hallucigenia.” Still, even those songs share the faster ones’ memorable ways with words! “FLASH BACK!!!!!!!” hits like a sucker punch: “I feel like I’m losing my mind!;” “FLASH BACK! / Remember everything! Scream out a crimson cry;” “To my brain, now starting to CRASH / CLAP!” Listeners get whiplash from this chaotic cry, since it follows the relatively solemn “Sayonara, Irene,” which describes thoughts as light as bubbles! 

The melodrama recurs in songs like “meimei” (“Sharpen your words in the eternal night, when no one can save you”), “Sayonara Ni Narimashita” (“I will live drowning in song”), and “DUA•RHYTHM” (“A voice that awakens the beast”). Chevon love to, as they say in “Love rut,” stay “thinking wildly;” they thrive on both narrative and musical mayhem! Making that even more evident are the meta pivots; they constantly describe the songs they are making and why they are making them. They encourage younger generations to raise their voices and sing in “meimei” and pray that their music will inspire them in “Sayonara Ni Narimashita.” They urge someone to “[f]inish writing it all down before it’s too late” in “Daisy,” promise to “weave words with single-minded devotion” in “Ruten,” and describe being “moved to tears by the sound of [their own] voices” in “JUDENCHU!! (2026 Ver.).” “Daisy” has the most curveballs of them all. It sounds like a message Jay Gatsby is giving to his former lover, the hopelessly naive Daisy, in The Great Gatsby. They urge “Daisy” to “be prepared” for when their inner madness becomes apparent, a “twisted nature [that] will one day inevitably” arrive! One can certainly argue that Jay Gatsby is a “twisted” man, making it reasonable to assume he inspired this track. After all, that novel is essentially about things not being what they seem, which is a nice and neat way to summarize Chevon’s musical identity! 

#3: AKMU, FLOWERING
FLOWERING exudes warmth and likability, as the duo sings odes to the natural world. What could have sounded like an overwrought, corny jamboree is something much more sincere and satisfying. That is not to say that calmness comes at the cost of liveliness or vice versa; there is plenty of room for both, and many of the songs sound suited for sitting around and clapping along at a campfire. Besides lively western flair (especially in “Paradise of Rumors” and “Spring Colors”), a sense of homespun happiness takes the form of a big brass band (“Graceful Breakfast”) and choir (“Stains”), mellow mood-setting at a sway-worthy speed (“Tent,” “Young and Married,” “Festival of Refugees”), and/or voices that convey quiet conviction (“Joy, Sorrow, A Beautiful Heart,” “The Right Person”). All the while, AKMU believably sing their gratitude for feeling connected to nature and keeping good company. This good company includes plants and animals; they treat their surroundings with the kind of care most people reserve for fellow humans. Besides directly singing their appreciation for all living things, they express it implicitly by describing themselves as equals, merely fellow travelers and temporary Earth stewards. “We’ve all left somewhere behind,” they say in “Festival of Refugees.” They empathize with a “weary traveler” in “Paradise of Rumors,” too, insisting the traveler should be proud of going on a journey to “a world cowards will never know.” They stress the need to see the world with one’s own eyes: “There are things you’ll never see on TV;” “There are things you only learn by leaving.” They too “leave” to learn more, soaking in the open roads and blue skies in the album’s teaser video; emphasizing an “it takes a village” way of life in the video for “Joy, Sorrow, A Beautiful Heart;” and singing about insatiable wanderlust, most directly in “Paid with Bugs”: “My soul, rattling and restless / Time is short, and there is so much to savor.” If one does not see much worth “savoring,” AKMU offer places to start: watching a happy budding family (“Young and Married”), the rainbows that can only come after rain (“Joy, Sorrow, A Beautiful Heart”), a loved one’s conscious efforts to do right by someone (“The Right Person”)... One need not have an exceptional life to have one that feels rich and abundant. It just requires a patient and keen eye. 

AKMU celebrate the bountiful blessings that life offers those who look for them, those who are willing to travel for them, and those who understand that optimism is much less groundless than many assume.

#2: Xdinary Heroes, DEAD AND
Each song on DEAD AND is its own brand of dynamite! There are constant adjustments to the tempo, the degree of vocal filtering or lack thereof, and the times when “more is more” or “less is more” for a dramatic effect. Examples of the latter include a relatively quiet moment before the guitars and electronics burst forth again in “Hurt So Good,” the “machine powering down” noise that ends several songs, and multiple lengthy instrumental breaks. Internal disarray is apparent more often than not. “Rise High Rise” can’t decide between restraint and its antithesis. “Voyager” has clear-voiced choruses but verses that sound filtered through an intercom. In the start-and-stop-filled “No Cool Kids Zone,” they can’t decide if they want to curse or not, so they settle on the equivalent of a slant rhyme (“Fool sheet”)! “Helium Balloon,” “KTM,” and “Voyager” each change partway through to sound prepared for a crowd to join them. And in “Hurt So Good,” spaceship-type noises start things out on a fun note that makes the screams in the second half of the chorus more jarring! 

A different but just as deliriously delightful game is played via lyrics. Each song is in a game of “Telephone” with at least one previous one, taking a term or topic in a new direction. They begin with a clever “Helium Balloon” analogy for a breakup, singing about “drifting away” and how “[t]he higher it goes / The smaller the memories grow.” This makes them “feel obsolete,” and they elaborate on that in “Voyager,” describing a “fading signal” and how everyone is just stardust in the end: “Someday, everything / Will scatter and be cast aside / Like a star does when it dies.” “No Cool Kids Zone” works with those comments about lights burning out: “I like the dark of my life.” “Hurt So Good” talks about dark insides in a more graphic way: “Vomit it out, even my heart / Burned black, all tattered and torn”! “Rise High Rise” goes off of the destroyed state described in “Hurt So Good” and complains that they are too deep into a toxic relationship, lying to themselves that “just one more game” will be worth it: “Should’ve sold, but I hold, can’t let go… One night… I’ll be rich… I am so close.” This gambler’s mentality is scorned in “KTM” and called a “misfit ego.” Lastly, “X room” uses words and phrases from multiple tracks, including “Memories in fading light” (the memories mentioned in “Helium Balloon” and the fading light mentioned in “Voyager”)  and “I rolled our dice in the darkness” (a die is mentioned in “Rise High Rise,” and the darkness is referred to in “No Cool Kids Zone” and “Hurt So Good”).

Internal sentiment consistency paired with external instrumental chaos collide and spill each song’s contents over like the exposed guts of a truly gnarly body of work!

#1: TXT, 7TH YEAR: A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns
Read a separate essay all about this release here!

Catch up on past “Best of” reviews here!