David Yong's route into K-pop doesn't follow the standard idol playbook. After discovering the genre through BIGBANG and TWICE, the Singaporean entrepreneur drew on years of vocal training as he took on Korean-language study, dance lessons, and recording in Seoul

For a band still defining itself in public, KAVE already have a very clear sense of what they are not. They are not interested in staying in one lane

1300 have released their debut studio album, ILLSAMGONGGONG, out now via Universal Music Korea. Five years since the Korean-Australian group's first demo, the 13-track project pulls together everything that has defined them so far

Identity, for idntt, is not a concept. It is something each member is actively in the process of figuring out – and doing so, unusually, in front of an audience that keeps getting bigger

MAMAMOO know exactly who they are. Twelve years in, Solar, Moon Byul, Whee In, and Hwa Sa have returned with 4ward – their first full-group album in over three and a half years – and a world tour that opened in Seoul before heading to arenas across the United States this August

At 17, xiihu was studying computer programming. Then she opened GarageBand on a whim, recorded herself through a pair of earphones, and never looked back. Since then, she's built a creative world entirely on her own terms – producing, songwriting, and DJing, each role feeding into the next

TAEMIN, the SHINee vocalist dubbed the 'Idol's Idol', has spent the better part of two decades building one of K-pop's most distinctive performance identities. At the end of June, he played his biggest UK show to date at BST Hyde Park – and we were there

POSER know what it means to be called a poser. The South Korean punk rockers – vocalist and guitarist Kim Jiho, guitarist Choi Jingeon, drummer Jeong Seong Ju, and bassist Song Kwang, who joined the band as its manager before picking up the instrument entirely