The Risk of Alt K-Pop Culture

If you’re big on indie and psych pop, which considering this magazine I suppose you must be, The Black Skirts might be for you. The tracks are mellow, smooth and versatile, and it’s the equivalent of the whole Tame Impala debate over here: did you know it’s just one guy? The reason why K-lit, and K-film have become so popular is because people love accessing different cultures and worldviews, which is exactly why K-Pop is so thrilling, it adds an extra leaf to our journey of discovery, inherent to finding new music anyway. Much of the other alt-names making waves on the scene are singer songwriters or rappers, both prospering genres underground, but you can hope that Indie rock is getting more and more prominent. One of our favourites is Sailor Honeymoon, the South Korean punk band, who first rose to our attention in 2024 with Bad Apple, an infectious tune that will stick in your head all day. Couple them with noisemakers DEAD CHANT, RUMKICKS and THE 1234 - DAH!, you can see punk is rising to prominence in South Korea, and the scene is becoming more varied every time you watch it from afar. Look further than BTS, guys, and the results will delight you.

Other genres you should check out that you probably don’t know about yet:

Grindcore: Like, the heaviest heavy metal you could ever imagine. It hurts even not listening to it on headphones. Punishing guitar riffs fuse with screaming gravelly voices and tend to fit all this, alongside political or satanic messaging, into one or two minute runtimes. Album covers often feature coffins or women with AK-47s. The genre rose to people’s attention with Napalm Death in the eighties, but other charmingly named bands include Pissthrone, Rectal Autopsy and Cumshot Wound.  

Seapunk: This genre came about when Tumblr became popular in the early 2010s, and carries a digital aquatic sound carried by synthesisers. The tracks are charming and mellow, perfect for lift shafts and waiting rooms. Weird, pumpy sound effect things tend to happen as the songs progress - unironically I may have discovered a new favourite genre when researching this article. It’s like a prelude to hyperpop and another psych pop driven genre called vaporwave, blending hip-hop and R&B, and Rihanna alluded to the movement in her lyrics and video for 2012 chart-hit “Diamonds”.  

Pansori: On the subject of K-Pop, let’s talk about these storytelling-driven tracks driven by soaring pianos and drum beats, the most simple, primal, stripped-back sonic imaginable, prioritising Korean folkloric storytelling. The tradition dates back to the 17th century when shamans performed these tracks that are now facing a resurgence from modern Pansori singers, after a brief 20th-century decline. Get there first before the West inevitably take the genre for themselves. 

Shitgaze: Here’s one to keep off your radar. These tracks make as much effortless noise as they can in a bid to be as irredeemably unlistenable as possible. The lyrics make no sense, nor do any of the creative decisions. It’s slacker, it’s noisy, but thankfully the songs are quite short. The more you hear of it, the less shit it becomes, though, artfully blending elements of shoegaze and low-fi garage rock, and the more patient you are, the more you’ll enjoy this fascinating Indie fusion genre. 

Bloghouse: Few names for this one: blog rock, blog house, tracks you’ll hear on the internet, inspired by digital sounds and innovations, in turn inspiring indie sleaze and hyperpop. LCD Soundsystem, Justice and CSS all first flirted with the genre back in the mid noughties, like a soundtrack to a Jane Schoenbrun film. You’ll find yourself on a rabbit hole discovering all the other Indie subgenres, like bandung indie, granada indie, and upssala Indie, all of which are very shoegazy, low-fi and sonically liberated. 

Utopian Virtual: Keep crawling through this list of microgenres and you’ll realise they all fall into the same hyperpoppy, vaporwavy claptrap eventually. This one’s particularly distorted and noisy, often to the point of being incomprehensible. It sounds outer spacey, like a 1980s commercial, trading in Stranger Things-era synth nostalgia. There are rarely any words but often a lot of interesting sounds. One to listen to if you’re a fan of Mac DeMarco, although some genre artists occasionally metal screech too.