K-pop girl group aespa / Courtesy of SM Entertainment
For K-pop, May and June were gloriously messy.
Over the past two months, artists bounced between internet memes and club sounds, nostalgia and reinvention, minimalist production and maximalist spectacle. Veteran acts proved they could still evolve without losing themselves, while younger groups continued searching for sounds they could truly call their own.
Some experiments paid off. Others raised more questions than answers. Here's what stood out, or fell flat, in K-pop's latest wave of releases.
BABYMONSTER, "CHOOM" EP — title track "CHOOM," released May 4
