FIRST PRESS

Disclosure: First Press operates independently but shares ownership ties with EG Management, which works with KiiiKiii.

Most rookie groups spend their first two years defending one sound. KiiiKiii have spent theirs leaving each one behind. The five-member group from Starship Entertainment, the agency's first new girl group in four years since Ive, has changed genre almost every release, and the charts have kept rewarding them for it.

The debut

KiiiKiii debuted on March 24, 2025 with the EP Uncut Gem, six tracks blending hip-hop, retro synth-pop and EDM. The pre-release single "I Do Me" did the early work: it entered Melon's Hot 100 at No. 13 and peaked at No. 4 on the Top 100 before the group had officially debuted. In debut-day coverage, member Sui put the pitch in one line: "We believe our uniqueness is our greatest strength."

The Korea Herald later noted that "I Do Me" won the group its first trophy on MBC's Show! Music Core 13 days after debut, and Uncut Gem reached No. 1 on the Circle Album Chart. By year's end the group had collected Rookie of the Year at the Seoul Music Awards and Best Music Video for "I Do Me" at the Melon Music Awards, among other rookie honors.

"404 (New Era)"

The second EP is where the group stopped sounding like a debut. "404 (New Era)", the lead single from Delulu Pack (January 26, 2026), runs on pulsing UK house and garage beats, with hard rap verses against airy vocals and lyric work from Balming Tiger's Omega Sapien. The concept takes the "404 Not Found" error code and turns it into a picture of freedom past the edge of the map. A pre-release TikTok challenge seeded the choreography before the song was out.

The Herald counts what came next: the group's first Melon Top 100 No. 1, three music show trophies, and entries on Japan's Billboard Hot Shot Songs. Delulu Pack spent eight straight weeks on Billboard's Global Excl. US chart, and in July Billboard named "404 (New Era)" the best K-pop song of 2026 so far, praising how fully the track pulls the listener into its world.

"Pop Off Pop Off"

Then another turn. The third EP, WhyKiiiKiii, arrived August 10, 2026, and moved into synth-pop, hyperpop and electronic territory. Lead single "Pop Off Pop Off" is built on a pulsing electronic beat and a chorus designed to stick, with summer imagery and bouncy, crisscrossing choreography made for short clips. The Herald heard echoes of Kesha's "Tik Tok" and Uhm Jung-hwa's "Disco" in the melody, which is a fair map of where the song sits: late-2000s club pop seen through a Seoul lens.

The reception, per the Herald: the video topped YouTube's worldwide trending music video chart shortly after release, the song sat at No. 27 on Melon's Top 100 the day after, and the album topped iTunes' K-pop albums chart in France, the Netherlands and Australia.

What to watch

• Whether the genre-hopping settles into a signature, or stays the signature.
• Japan. Oricon and Billboard Japan entries have arrived on each of the last two EPs.
• The year-end circuit, where a group with a Billboard midyear No. 1 and a Bonsang already on the shelf will be judged as a contender, not a rookie.

The Herald asked in August whether KiiiKiii could be the next NewJeans, and answered its own question: "Probably not in the sense of following the same path." That reads as a compliment. Eighteen months in, KiiiKiii look less like the next anything and more like the first version of themselves, still being written in public.