K-pop Lineage · EP.03

HYBE went techno: how three girl groups landed on the same sound in three weeks

LE SSERAFIM, ILLIT, KATSEYE. Different labels under one parent company. Three comebacks in April 2026, one shared genre, no coincidence.

01Three comebacks in three weeks

The timeline is what makes this episode worth writing. KATSEYE released Pinky Up on 9 April 2026, the day before their Coachella debut. LE SSERAFIM released CELEBRATION on 24 April 2026 as the lead single for their second studio album PUREFLOW pt.1. ILLIT released It's Me on 30 April 2026 as the title track of their fourth mini album MAMIHLAPINATAPAI. Three groups, three labels, twenty-one days.

KATSEYE's Pinky Up, the first of the three releases. Hyperpop chorus, hard techno breakdown, dropped a day before Coachella.Source: HYBE LABELS YouTube

The genre tags reading the same way three weeks in a row isn't normal. K-pop title tracks usually telegraph their label's distinct production house. Source Music, BELIFT LAB and HYBE × Geffen historically each had their own sound. And then suddenly, in one month, they didn't.

02The seniors: LE SSERAFIM

LE SSERAFIM debuted on 2 May 2022 as HYBE's first ever girl group, under Source Music. They were the older sister figure for the lineage that didn't exist yet. Four years later, they're now the most established HYBE girl group, with a 2nd studio album in their hands and a new sonic identity that pulls them away from their early bossa-pop and hyper-cute eras.

LE SSERAFIM CELEBRATION Official MV. The members run through deserts and snowfields with a crowd of monsters, performing headbanging choreography to a hardstyle drop.Source: HYBE LABELS YouTube · Directed by Yang Soonsik

CELEBRATION is the most sonically aggressive single LE SSERAFIM have released. It's described in the credits as a melodic techno and hardstyle track, with a chorus that builds into clobbering kick drums and a repeated mantra of "Time to celebrate / SSERAFIM on the way." Members Kim Chaewon and Huh Yunjin are co-credited as writers, and the lyric "이건 FEARLESS 2.0" ("this is FEARLESS 2.0") explicitly frames the song as a return to the group's original combative energy, but louder.

The MV pushes the same idea visually. CELEBRATION is described as a "hymn to those who are different," but the production choice is the bigger story. LE SSERAFIM didn't decide to do hardstyle by themselves. The other two HYBE girl groups arrived at the same conclusion within two weeks.

03The rookies: ILLIT

ILLIT debuted on 25 March 2024 under BELIFT LAB, formed through the I-LAND 2 survival show. Until April 2026, they were the soft, dreamy, Y2K-coded HYBE girl group. Magnetic, Cherish (My Love), Tick-Tack, all live in roughly the same hyper-cute, Y2K-electronic territory. Whisper vocals, candy synths, twin choreography.

ILLIT's It's Me Official MV. The group's first proper techno title track since debut, openly framed as a "boss babe" identity shift.Source: BELIFT LAB YouTube · Directed by YVNG WING (IDIOTS)

Then It's Me happened. BELIFT LAB explicitly framed the track as ILLIT's first techno genre title since debut. The members talked about being surprised by the genre choice during the album press cycle, with Moka calling it "a techno genre we had never expected, so it felt fresh" and Yunah describing the intro as "so exciting that we all headbanged together."

The shift is sharp. It's Me drops the cute filter and replaces it with futuristic visuals, vibrant clashing colours, and a hook built on the lyric "Your favourite is me." The producers are The Wavys, with songwriters including Sorana, Youra and The Deep. The repetitive driving beat sits in the same EDM family as CELEBRATION, just with cuter vocal delivery on top.

The point is that ILLIT, the youngest HYBE girl group, didn't pivot to techno because it was their natural next step. They pivoted because the rest of the family was already there.

04The global outpost: KATSEYE

KATSEYE debuted on 28 June 2024 from The Debut: Dream Academy, the global survival show co-produced by HYBE and Geffen Records. They are technically not based in Korea. They are a Los Angeles based girl group, six members from Switzerland, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States and Korea, signed to HYBE × Geffen and operating mostly in English. As of February 2026, member Manon Bannerman is on hiatus, so recent releases including Pinky Up are recorded by the remaining five.

Pinky Up is the most overtly meme-coded of the three tracks. The lyrics riff on a Mona Lisa heist, "shaking ass in the parking lot," and the absurdist line "A mind of delusion, philosophy / I kinda know nothing just like Socrates." But underneath the jokes, the production is hard. The Fader's review pointed directly at "the chorus's hard techno brutalism," and Rate Your Music users have been complaining about the song being a "pulsing galloping techno rave" disguised as a meme. The structure is hyperpop on the verses, then a wall of hard techno kicks on the chorus drop.

KATSEYE performing PINKY UP live at Coachella 2026. The track was given its live debut at the Sahara Stage.Source: Coachella YouTube

Same skeleton as the other two HYBE singles released that month, just dressed as a joke. The Coachella performance shows the techno chorus translating to a festival environment with no friction. The four-on-the-floor kicks land harder in front of a crowd than they do in the MV.

05Why now: K-pop's techno moment

The interesting question isn't whether HYBE girl groups are doing techno. They obviously are. The interesting question is why three of them landed in the same sonic territory at almost the same time.

The wider answer is global. 2024 was the year of Charli XCX's Brat, an album that legitimised loud, abrasive, club-leaning electronic pop in mainstream pop conversation. The same year brought Lady Gaga's Disease, Tate McRae's 3D, and a wave of artists pulling 2010s rave aesthetics back into the Top 40. By 2026, hard techno and hardstyle were no longer subculture sounds. They were chart language. Western pop had spent two years rehearsing it, and K-pop was ready to translate.

The three HYBE singles read like three different translations of the same source material. CELEBRATION takes the European festival end of the spectrum, with melodic techno verses and clobbering hardstyle kicks on the drop, sitting around the 150 BPM mark that hardstyle producers tend to favour. Pinky Up goes the opposite way: hyperpop verse texture pulled from PC Music's playbook, then a hard techno chorus that bounces in a way that feels more 2010s electroclash than 2024 Berlin. It's Me is the gentlest of the three, more techno-pop than techno proper, with the driving beat used as a frame for ILLIT's signature whisper-led vocal style rather than a feature in its own right.

LE SSERAFIM CELEBRATION Performance Film. Strip away the MV narrative and the choreography is built around the hardstyle kick pattern.Source: HYBE LABELS YouTube

What sits underneath all three is the same architectural choice: build the chorus around a four-on-the-floor kick, drop into something close to dance music, and let the vocal carry attitude rather than melody. It's a structural decision more than a stylistic one, and once one HYBE label commits to it the others have a clear template to work from.

06One stage, three HYBE girl groups, one sound

The last piece of evidence is on tape. On 30 April 2026, Mnet's M Countdown ran an episode that featured LE SSERAFIM performing CELEBRATION, ILLIT performing It's Me, and KATSEYE performing Pinky Up, all on the same broadcast. Three HYBE girl groups, three sub-labels, three new techno singles, one music show running order. It's the cleanest visual proof of the parallel lineage that this episode is about.

M Countdown, 30 April 2026. The same broadcast, three HYBE girl group comeback stages, three songs in the same techno-leaning family.Source: Mnet K-POP YouTube

Watch them back to back and the family resemblance is hard to miss. LE SSERAFIM open with sharp, militant choreography over hardstyle kicks. ILLIT follow with cleaner, brighter techno-pop on a futuristic set. KATSEYE close with the most playful of the three, but the chorus drops into the same hard kick pattern. Three groups, three concepts, one BPM neighbourhood.

07What it means for the lineage

EP.01 and EP.02 of this series both looked at vertical lineage. Senior groups paving the way, junior groups following. Big Hit Music spaced six years between every boy group. KQ spaced five years between ATEEZ and xikers. The handover was deliberate, sequential, generational.

EP.03 is horizontal. Three girl groups under three sub-labels, working in parallel, suddenly aligning to the same sonic family in the same month. There is no senior LE SSERAFIM passing techno down to junior ILLIT. The three groups arrive at the sound at the same time, each with their own twist on it. LE SSERAFIM brings the festival hardstyle. ILLIT brings the pop-leaning techno. KATSEYE brings the meme-techno hybrid for global ears.

If EP.02 was about a label drawing one line three times, EP.03 is about three labels drawing the same line at once. K-pop families are getting more complicated. The lineage is too.

KATSEYE PINKY UP Choreography Version. Same techno chorus, same kick pattern, isolated to the dance vocabulary.Source: KATSEYE Official YouTube