(Part 2) Best New Music: May 2026

Reviews of new releases from Korean, Japanese, and Chinese artists!

View the Substack version of this piece here!

Check out part one here! 

#10: Jinyoung (aka PARK JINYOUNG), Said & Done 
Said & Done has visuals and songs that ought to be analyzed as a package deal, with connections between components that send the same deliberate message yet also share a just-as-deliberate open-endedness.

The album trailer features a square room suspended in pitch-black space, so it resembles a levitating box. It is implied that Jinyoung is spending ages in this room, making it a compact time capsule with clear end points and a finite number of symbolic items. However, that room also includes hints of chapters still unwritten. For example, text on the screen throughout the trailer appears typewritten, but the sentences are assigned footnotes; the body paragraphs of Jinyoung’s past are also treated like the “bonus contents” for those who still want to read more. Another example comes from pops of color, like the yellow album copy that sits on black-and-white shelves, and the light-green envelope amid his mail. That envelope is stamped with “RETURN NOT ACCEPTED,” includes a sticker indicating it is a birthday card, comes with a potential birthday cake topping, and is marked as coming from Jinyoung’s former boss! The birthday card and cake topping represent a special occasion that comes and goes in a finite length of time: just 24 hours that cannot be “RETURNED.” However, Jinyoung keeps his cake slice and most of the bag of nuts near him as the days go by, prolonging the “birthday party.” He does not treat the past as purely the past; he treats tokens from it as living documents that keep the good feelings from the past alive. The cake and topping offer a tangible reminder of someone thinking about him. 

Jinyoung also wants others to be reminded of times that others showed care for them, so in the “EVERLOVE” video, he facilitates strangers’ acts of sharing and kindness. These start out as split-screen scenes but turn into ones where the strangers are in the same physical space. Jinyoung brings people together in the present by drawing on a lesson from his past: that love is the most enduring force. As the final message on the screen says during the album trailer, “When all is said and done, only love remains.”

Much of the past can become irrelevant, but one aspect of it that never does is love, which lies at the core of each song on Said & Done. Jinyoung starts with “And Now,” in which he sings, “I learned from my mistakes… I wanted to know / If I [could] finally face the truth / And show you what I’ve become / Now, I’m learning how to heal.” Love for others is what allows him to heal, and the other songs express his expanded capacity for loving thanks to empathy: “[P]erhaps we are all just funny, isolated islands,” he suggests in “EVERLOVE.” Other songs imply as much and frown upon trying to put on a poker face: ”Do you still pretend you’re okay? / ‘Cause I could always tell” (“Different Tracks”); “How are you so bad at hiding your feelings?” (“One-sided love”). People share many more struggles than they realize, and it should be easier to not judge others once people recognize that. 

Yet another way Jinyoung shows that people are more alike than they assume is with a message on a wall in “EVERLOVE”: “WE ARE ALL GROWN KIDS.” He strongly stresses that sentiment with a montage of childhood home footage, time spent mid-workday playing with toys and enjoying the snacks he did when he was little, the silhouettes of children playing under a desk, and a close-up (in the album trailer, not the music video) of his sweater’s misaligned buttons (bringing to mind this line from “Will I be okay?”:  “We’re like buttons fastened wrong from the very beginning”). He learns to heal and go easier on himself by remembering everyone is still a little kid in need of affection on the inside.

Said & Done commits to the topic of extracting highlights from Jinyoung’s past and reviving them as present-day mood-boosters and life lessons. He connects with people anew and proves that having a backwards gaze and foresight are not mutually exclusive. 

#9: Hinatazaka46, Kind of love (Special Edition)
Kind of love (Special Edition) expands on the amusing outlook of its pre-released title track. “Kind of love” laments the “dopamine shouting” at Hinatazaka46 and compares signaling interest in their crushes to using turn signals! Now, the B-sides channel relatable anxiety and exasperation — both self-directed and not — into silly similes and metaphors that still hit the nail on the head! 

In “Empty,” they view life as choosing between the lesser of two evils: treading water in an intimidating ocean (“too vast to swim across / I hesitate even to dive in”) or dying in an empty fish tank (“Hollow… life is just like a fish-less tank / What is it all for?;” “A life without dreams is like a fish stranded on land”). The aimlessness that ails adolescents and other young generations pushes back against the “just keep swimming” expression: “Without a purpose, having lost our goals / Where are we supposed to swim?” (emphasis added). They undercut the supposed logic of “how the world works” again in “Ensyuritu,” trying and failing to make mathematical sense out of the most illogic of truths: feelings of love! “Kokoro no buranko” involves another revision of a typical metaphor. It describes life as less like a pendulum and more like a swing set, with a monotony that can also bring comforting familiarity. It is not just “going back and forth, repeating the same thing;” it can trigger therapeutic nostalgia: “[I]t's okay to swing at your own pace;” “Even though I'm just swaying, I feel like the burdens I was carrying are becoming lighter.” “SHUWA SHUWA” is another song that frames new experiences as unwanted. They compare crushing anew to the fleeting presence of bubbles in sparkling water, a beverage with a taste they initially find bitter: “It stings a bit at first / But eventually, you get used to it”!

The last two songs drill down on the reason why this J-pop group resonates with youths. Rather than use the language of those who “know better” and are more “grown-up,” they articulate emotions in surprisingly on-the-nose ways that actually encapsulate what youths are feeling. Their words can ring true because they embrace “childish” framing and permit some pouting! They throw a bit of a tantrum in “Saraba saraba,” with outbursts like “I’m mad!,” “Annoying!,” and “I want to say things like ‘Stop messing around!’” They also kick mature romantic symbolism to the curb: “I hate romantic nights… Make that blue moon disappear!;” “Don’t pretend to be a knight!” And in “Kimi ni yarareta!,” they sound like they are talking about a game of tag from which they are exhausted, describing who stole their hearts as a “Thief! Thief! Thief!” Rather than adjust to adults’ worldviews, they meet youths where they are.

#8: Lil Ghost, 魁 (aka Kui)
This rockstar runs on angst and lays it all out in the opening track: “A single human skin, worn by two souls at once… All hope has withered and died / Such beauty… itches and crawls beneath the skin, ready to burst apart…” The song ends with “All I need is for you to save me with your love,” and therein lies the problem. Because Lil Ghost seeks someone else to feel whole, he never succeeds; he looks outside of himself for the kind of personal satisfaction that is simply impossible without doing the work on himself that he finds too agonizing or confusing to even attempt. He would rather stick to vices like the toxic romance he sings about an addiction to in “kiss,” and feeding his inner beast continues to be counterintuitive. Whether channeled into fast-paced pop-rock (done especially effectively in “Losing My Mind”) or a slower state of gloom (like “In Your Eyes”), Lil Ghost’s turmoil remains palpable, and it is repeatedly compounded by graphic lyrics, like in “right by wrong”: “Feels like broken glass spreading over my skin, like gossip / Only to entertain / Maybe that's the life I made and the price I pay.” Lots of artists sing about feeling severed from their public-facing selves, but Lil Ghost takes it to the next level with grim ways with words and instrumental turbulence. 魁 further stands apart for its literal portrayals of being “of two minds,” in the ways he oscillates between voicing his inner demon (from “Losing My Mind”: “I try to break the cycle / It breaks me in the end… All my demons born again”) and his human side (from “Sad Ass”: “Crying to Marley & Me / Blaming it on allergies”!). 

At the same time as Lil Ghost pours out his soul, he exposes the universal truth that everyone needs love to feel like they are not monsters. He goes back and forth between singing about being unwanted and his alter ego being so devoured by the desire to be wanted that he doesn’t care how he makes it happen. Emotionally, 魁 is as much of a villain origin story as it is a cry for help, and both layers allow this album to keep its catharsis a two-way street. It is an album some people need to hear, and it is the album Lil Ghost needed to make.

#7: NMIXX, Heavy Serenade
Much has been and will continue to be said about how out-of-left-field NMIXX’s musical image is, but there is an element to it that has been under-discussed and under-appreciated: NMIXX treat platonic love with the same big musical swings that artists typically reserve for romantic love. In other words, they treat love for friends as not inferior to love for a significant other. In fact, they suggest that love for friends can be an even stronger force, and therefore a force even more worthy of multifaceted odes and gestures. 

The songs on Heavy Serenade suit the theme of loud and convention-ignoring relationships, with fickle tempos and filter choices, purposeful clashes between certain vocal and instrumental tones and volumes, and the equivalent of clumsiness in the form of details like gasps and exclamations of shock (like “Oh!”). Heavy Serenade carries on NMIXX’s tradition of bobbing and weaving in ways that sound like jarring whiplash to some listeners and like admirable experiments to others. Their visuals also remain ambitious, with surreal elements but a focus on intimate interpersonal moments over a cohesive plot. If the songs are not one’s cup of tea, the visual accompaniments are at least worth commending for their sensitive core. 

The most summative lyrics in Heavy Serenade are in “Different Girl”: “You're like… The main character in fiction… A little strange”! NMIXX have nothing but praise for that “strangeness,” and their musical world-building is all about people with real main-character energy despite existence in a fictional realm. They narrate a story and a song — a “heavy serenade” —for just them and the “strange” ones they cherish. It is not meant to be light and widely accessible. It is the product of “Love [that has] wandered on its own” that no one needs “permission” for (“Crescendo”), the product of “worlds intertwining” (“Different Girl”), the sign of a step towards a “new frontier” (“Superior”), and the entrance to a realm loved ones travel to with the help of twisted wings (sung about in “Superior” and made literal in the “Crescendo" video).

In addition to wings, glass is a go-to metaphor. They sing about being “broken” by love and then remade “into a one-of-a-kind bouquet,” like the bouquets they make in the “Heavy Serenade” music video during their “[g]lassy serenade.” They revisit that theme in “Superior”: “The more wе break, the more we’ll shine like glass.” Not to mention the breaking glass in the “Crescendo” video, which makes it possible for a fellow member to join one who was previously stuck behind glass alone. Glass is an apt metaphor for the kind of powerful, underestimated love about which NMIXX sing. It has a ubiquitous and sturdy presence, but it is also fragile and handled with care. Plus, it provides windows to the world and to one another.

Other elements of this era’s videos speak volumes less via specific symbols and more via behaviors. The members show how they enrich each other’s lives through a “pinky promise”-involving dance move in “Heavy Serenade” and through joining a member by a tree swing in a space that no longer appears blurry once she has their company in “Crescendo.” Furthermore, “Heavy Serenade” screams “Let me show you something!” They put flowers in each other’s hair, show each other what crafts they are making, recommend vinyl records to each other, show each other what party supplies they are considering bringing, and much more. Wanting to show people parts of one’s world is one of the most taken-for-granted and special forms of showing affection.

#6: CORTIS, GREENGREEN
This review of CORTIS’s music holds up; GREENGREEN proves the group’s point that new creative avenues are closer at hand than one thinks. A musician does not have to reinvent the wheel to make a memorable statement — as long as that artist has talent! The members of CORTIS certainly do, pulling off an image that roams somewhere between ragtag and polished. They still have the look and sound of indie artists with off-the-cuff instincts, traits that belie their A-list industry backing and glossy expectations. The songs on GREENGREEN have more of a grimy quality to them than those on COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES, and the corresponding videos further attest to their rough-on-purpose, skewed presentation. With odd camera angles, no consistent dress code, an attitude of “We own this place” no matter the setting, and the treatment of “vibe” and “plot” as interchangeable, they simultaneously make specific statements and suggest they are not being deep. They genuinely want to just play show-and-tell with their preferences, like their favorite hangout spots (in the “REDRED” video) and their cravings (in “ACAI”). They do touch on more serious emotions (like fears and longing in “Blue Lips”), but even then, their words need no decoding. 

CORTIS’s music and videos do have more to them than what meets the eyes and ears. It’s just that the “more”-ness stays underhanded, floating relatively high and near the surface of the iceberg. For example, they indirectly push back on a “not Korean enough” argument by situating part of the “REDRED” video in a samyeopsal (Korean barbecue) restaurant and repeating the phrase “Pallang-gwi” in the chorus (it means “flapping ear,” referring to an easily-influenced person of which CORTIS do not think highly). They also counter the argument that they are not still the same CORTIS, by choosing a thrift store as a “REDRED” video setting (bringing to mind a 2025 song about having next-level thrifting skills, “FaSHioN”), expressing pride in their career roots in “Wassup,” and representing positive things as “green” (after having talked about “paint[ing] the town green” in “GO!”). They brand themselves before others can, calling themselves “five brats” right away on the first track, and later wearing the “YOUNGCREATORCREW” title as a badge of honor. Yet another critique they address perhaps before it is even raised: being “too basic.” Yes, they have seemingly cut-and-dry meaning to GREENGREEN, categorizing likes as “green” and dislikes as “red,” but they also show how simplicity leaves room for sly suggestions. In this case, the sonic outlier “Blue Lips” shows that all it takes to show they want to try a new musical direction is picking a different color! They translate this "It's that easy!” sentiment into music that makes hyphens in order, from punk-hop to dance-rock.

GREENGREEN reinforces CORTIS’s belief that straightforward statements and odd, novel applications can actually be quite compatible.

#5: SCANDAL, ECHO
One song on ECHO after another unleashes jaunty guitars, anthemic percussion, and plenty of zigzags. This is all to be expected from these J-rock extraordinaires, but what is less expected are the profound ways they express their passion for music. They practically personify music, treating it as something with the power of a tangible, physical force, something strong enough to break out of the realm of the abstract and into the core of humans, of nature, and of human nature. The ways music courses through them and makes them feel alive are celebrated in song after song. “I have no choice but to dance,” they repeat during “Girl is Ghost,” a sentiment shared with “SPOTLIGHT”: “I can’t dance [if I’m] just staying inside this room.” “A distorted guitar… is the best medicine,” they insist in “Hurt beat.” “Heaven” describes how music enables mental preparation: “‘Are you ready yet?’ / ‘I'm ready now’ / Voices I hear from afar… finally take shape as sound.” In “cla classic,” they declare a night is “not so bad” with “a song like this, lighting up the night.” They go so far as to treat music like a sixth sense, on par with the five senses’ abilities to trigger memories. For example, they recall a music venue that smelled like cigarettes in “cla classic,” while they sing about an old comfort playlist. And in “Blue bus,” they sing about a new bakery’s “aroma melt[ing] right into the rhythm of the city.” The album ends with “Stay Holy,” in which they sing, “Let's just stay like this forever, holding each other and melting into one.” It ties back to the opening track, “Girl is Ghost,” when they sing about things that last for eternity, like the transcendence of song.

While valorizing music, they de-value certain human behaviors. They frequently lament the mental games people play with each other and the ways truths are twisted: “[I]s it a joke?” (“Girl is Ghost”); “No one really knows my true, unmasked self” (“Dress to kill”); “Say something… Mr. Silent / Is this an act or just innocence?” (“Strawberry”); “No more pretending… just go as we are” (“Blue bus”).

They do use some more down-to-earth analogies, comparing feelings to wind blowing by (in “Hurt beat,” “Heaven,” “SPOTLIGHT,” and “Stay Holy”), to “old scars” (mentioned in “Stay Holy” and “Hurt beat”), and to a battlefield (mentioning “the front lines” in “Dress to kill” and how “every day feels like a war” in “cla classic”). But this does the opposite of diluting the impact of their lyrics that have a more abstract dimension. They do not just see music as rising above other feelings, but as rising through other feelings, so stopping throughout the material world before hitting a spiritual high makes sense!

In short, ECHO is both enjoyable and extremely insightful.

#4: HEART OF WOMAN, Heart Byte : LEGACY
This girl group represents a musical timeline. They opt for old-school influences throughout the album that bring First- and Second-Generation K-pop and early-aughts pop/R&B stars to mind. They also bring to mind music of a bygone era at technical levels, in terms of melodic structures and marketing tactics. Regarding the latter point, they are debuting not with a social-media-snippet-friendly single, but a full-length album complete with bonus tracks! Those tracks, titled “Daydreaming” and “Life is a game,” do what the other songs do: give the group ample time to construct a meaningful and memorable musical world that brings their Y2K instincts into a present, personalized pop-culture moment. They make this moment their own by brushing their old-school songs with futuristic details; putting modern slang into many tracks; and making grand-scale videos that seem to be in every place on a timeline at once, from a time of traveling via horseback to UFOs! The album and corresponding videos show who the members of this group are without showing all, but they provide a refreshingly lengthy list of traits for audiences to keep in mind as they unravel their identities further! 

Patterns and plots in HEART OF WOMAN’s fictional world-building are alluded to but kept broad throughout the album. A non-exhaustive list: creating a new world to replace the annoyingly “black and white” one (mentioned in “Told U So” and made literal in the “ALIVE” trailer), embodying light in the darkness (a phrase mentioned in nearly every song and visually represented via shooting stars and a meteor in the “ALIVE” and “How Not to Lose Myself (Lost in Proof)” videos), stakes that seem “life and death” (in “ALIVE”: “The game begins between life and death;” in “SHOW H.O.W”: “[D]o or die, a silent warning”), feeling wide awake (an expression in “Close To Me,” “Dive With Me,” “My Vision,” and “TEA”), doing things that have never been done or seen before (words to the effect of “No one’s ever seen that” are in “ALIVE,” “TEA,” “One Beat,” and more), seeing life as always in “showtime” (themes in “My Vision” and “SHOW H.O.W”), “going wild” (“SHOW H.O.W,” “Told U So,” “My Vision”), “diving in” to experiences (“SHOW H.O.W,” “Dive With Me”), eagerly experiencing “dizzying” highs and lows (“TEA,” “($.$)”), and being “drawn” towards the new and unfamiliar (“SHOW H.O.W,” “TEA,” “ALIVE,” “Close To Me,” “My Vision,” and more). Most telling of all are the lyrics about the passage of time: “Rewind to the answer” (“ALIVE”), “[T]ime is over” (“SHOW H.O.W”), “History has begun” (“Told U So”), “[V]room goes the clock” (“TEA”), “I’m lost in time” (“Close To Me”), “Like a broken, twisted clock / Caught between times that never align” (“Lost in Proof”), and more. 

Heart Byte : LEGACY is an impressively un-rushed introduction to a new K-pop girl group that balances Y2K homages with cryptic clues about how HEART OF WOMAN’s story deserves attention for its own reasons.

#3: Billlie, the collective soul and unconscious: chapter two
Stay tuned for a separate write-up all about this release!

#2: LE SSERAFIM, ‘PUREFLOW’, Pt. 1
Stay tuned for a separate write-up all about this release!

#1: TAEYONG, WYLD
WYLD crackles with the kind of energy that can only come from someone in his element, someone who feels fully alive and externalizes that internal electricity. The songs are one swerve after another, with components that repeat themselves at a basic level but completely change at another. For example, “WYLD” has several acceleration periods, but those escalations unfold in starkly different ways. And some songs seem to fall into a repetitive groove but interrupt their own momentum, like the extra emphasis put on “ooo” and “ayyy” syllables in “Feeling Myself” and on the “I” sound during the bridge of “Run.”

Although there are some nice nods to TAEYONG’s previous work  — a continuation of the “404” series with “404 Euphoria;” once again using the color blue as a focal point, this time in “Mermaid;” nods to his band NCT’s music, via an interpolation in “WYLD” and a song title shout-out in “I’m a Dancing Cactus” — the majority of the time, WYLD unleashes sides of TAEYONG never seen or heard before. Those sides make overlapping appearances. He is whispering in one moment (offering whiplash during the otherwise yell-focused “Skiii”) and sounding far away in the next (his voice echoing from a distance in songs like “Run” and “404 Euphoria”). One second, he is spitting the fastest rap of perhaps his entire career so far (in “Skiii”), and soon after, he is showing off more sides to his singing than ever before. He goes from having the deep, monotonous voice of a computer program in “404 Euphoria” to sounding more like himself again later in the same song, as if listeners have just imagined the mood swing. 

As much as untamed creatures cause fear and chaos, there is a logic to their behaviors. Provoking humans’ fear is not the ultimate goal; it is a mere byproduct of animals acting in pursuit of self-preservation. They might appear like good-for-nothing chaos agents to humans, but in those animals’ minds, they are behaving in controlled and sometimes calculating ways. Similarly, WYLD is not just a kind of musical mayhem for the sake of acting “wild.” It is the inevitable product of TAEYONG allowing himself to just be “wild,” to behave wholly based on instinct. His in-the-moment mindset results in music that shares some traits with the animal kingdom: perpetual suspense in a high-stakes environment, noises made to signal certain things that outsiders might not understand, and a “Do whatever it takes” mentality. On that last point, TAEYONG will do whatever it takes to express himself, even if it comes across as impenetrable to others. He is not hung up on what noises to make to signal his meanings; he just makes the noises that feel right to him! These span an incredible range: an elephant-like horn in “WYLD,” the sound of an intercom-mediated dialogue with himself in “I’m a Dancing Cactus,” a blaring bass in “Hot,” guitars and drums kicking in at an unexpected time in “Run”... The synths are in rev-up mode sometimes (like in “WYLD”) and start floating around at others (like in “Hypnotic”). Rattling garage drums are cued up after sirens and beeps at times (like in “Storm”) and translate into a dance-floor playlist at others (during “I’m a Dancing Cactus”). A piano offers a subtle yet significant tempo tweak during “Hypnotic.” A series of starts and stops adds a stuttering effect to “I’m a Dancing Cactus.” Tempo changes in “Feeling Myself” add their own type of texture. A more focused rapper persona gives way to chill “da-da-das” in “Mermaid”! The list of attention-holding pivots goes on and on! TAEYONG also sees moments of silence as opportunities to pounce, like in “Storm,” when a nanosecond of silence before the chorus triggers an extra degree of suspense, and when beat drops give listeners extra jolts in songs like “WYLD.” The music sounds like it is made by someone who does not know what he’s doing, yet because he actually does, listeners are pulled into the surging sonic currents before they can develop a dislike of them! And once they experience each full ride, the confusion might remain, but in a positive “What a rush!” sense! Listeners ought to just trust that TAEYONG knows what lanes he needs to steer each song down. Even the most jarring sounds are worthwhile moments that contribute to the overall exhilaration.

As for the “WYLD” music video, TAEYONG fluidly morphs via his expressions and choreography, sometimes crawling around or pouncing like an animal and other times appearing like just a sensual, brooding person! But whatever or whoever he is channeling in the moment, the main point is just that: it is in the moment. It seems subconscious, as if it is simply in his DNA to keep shape-shifting — like how animal species are always naturally evolving and adapting. 

WYLD is not chaotic with no rhyme or reason for it. TAEYONG has a creative vision that outsiders might not click with, but all that matters is that he holds onto the knowledge that he is fully expressing himself. The overall feeling while listening to WYLD is that TAEYONG has been let loose and is unstoppable, and an album that could easily have become a failed, circus-like experiment is instead a propulsive portrayal of primal instincts.

Catch up on past “Best of the Month” reviews here and here!