The rookie girl group's steady rise suggests a different path to becoming one of K-pop's defining acts A concept photo for KiiiKiii's new EP "WhyKiiiKiii," released on Monday (Starship Entertainment) KiiiKiii, a rookie girl group under Starship Entertainment, home to Ive, has been steadily building momentum with each release, most recently with its third EP "WhyKiiiKiii," which dropped Monday.The EP's main track "Pop Off Pop Off" topped YouTube's worldwide trending music video chart shortly after release and had peaked at No. 27 on Melon's Top 100 as of Tuesday. The album also topped iTunes' K-pop albums chart in France, the Netherlands and Australia, and entered the top 10 in 13 countries.If NewJeans arrived as an instant sensation, KiiiKiii's debut was more of a slow-burn conversation starter. The comparison speaks less to the two groups themselves than to what NewJeans came to represent — a rookie group that redirected K-pop almost overnight.Still, "I Do Me," KiiiKiii's prerelease single from its debut EP "Uncut Gem," earned the group its first trophy just 13 days after its official debut in March 2025, on MBC's "Show! Music Core" — one of South Korea's three terrestrial countdown shows, seen as a bigger platform than the country's cable music shows.Plenty of groups debut strongly only to lose momentum with their follow-up. KiiiKiii did not. Six months later, the digital single "Dancing Alone" brought KiiiKiii its first win on a cable music show. Then, in January, "404 (New Era)," the main single off its second EP "Delulu Pack," landed KiiiKiii on NME's "Essential Emerging Artists 100" list for 2026.The song also gave KiiiKiii its first Melon Top 100 No. 1, three music show trophies, and chart entries on Japan's Billboard Hot Shot Songs and Oricon's surge chart.That steady progression is what makes the third EP significant. Three releases in, KiiiKiii's identity looks less like a debut concept and more like a formula the group can sustain.Starship has described KiiiKiii as embodying "Gen Z beauty" — a blend of Gen Z sensibility and Y2K influence. The company's approach to KiiiKiii's concept is easier to grasp by watching the prerelease "Candy Pink Magic Hole Flip Phone" than by defining it. KiiiKiii 키키 'Candy Pink Magic Hole Flip Phone (나 어떡해)' Stop Motion Unlike a conventional music video, "Candy Pink Magic Hole Flip Phone" unfolds through stop-motion photo sequences, evoking flipping through a scrapbook or scrolling a feed rather than watching a film. Yet, it retains the visual world-building central to K-pop.Musically, KiiiKiii has shown little interest in sticking to one genre. After drawing on UK house and garage for "404 (New Era)," it turned to electronic synth-pop for "Pop Off Pop Off" in pursuit of another chart-topping run.The new main track is built as a quirky summer song, anchored by punchy synth sounds, a sharp beat and a chorus designed to linger after one listen.Part of what makes "Pop Off Pop Off" intriguing is how familiar it sounds, its melody carrying echoes of Kesha's 2010-hit "Tik Tok" and, closer to home, late-1990s pop diva Uhm Jung-hwa's "Disco." Far from imitation, the familiarity is part of what makes the song accessible.And for all its contemporary synth-pop surface — the kind associated with Charli XCX and Kesha — "Pop Off Pop Off" remains, underneath, a well-constructed K-pop song: a restrained build that opens into an emotional release, a prechorus tease before the hook lands, and repetition until it sticks. The skeleton still follows K-pop's familiar songwriting grammar.That may offer the clearest answer to the question this notebook began with.NewJeans became a defining act of its generation by challenging that grammar, combining Y2K aesthetics with hip-hop and R&B influences in a way that helped redirect K-pop's sound and visual language. KiiiKiii, on the evidence so far, is not following the same path.Instead, KiiiKiii has taken a more gradual route, picking up sounds of the moment and fitting them effectively into K-pop's established formula while building a recognizable identity from one release to the next. Where NewJeans disrupted the prevailing formula almost immediately, KiiiKiii has been accumulating momentum with each comeback.So, could KiiiKiii become the next “NewJeans”? Probably not in the sense of following the same path or reshaping K-pop in the same way. But if "the next NewJeans" means a rookie girl group growing into one of the defining acts of its generation, KiiiKiii's steady rise suggests it may yet have a shot — not by becoming another NewJeans, but by getting there its own way. A concept photo for KiiiKiii's new EP "WhyKiiiKiii," released on Monday (Starship Entertainment) Cover image of KiiiKiii's third EP "WhyKiiiKiii" (Starship Entertainment)