KATSEYE's O2 show highlights K-pop's shift towards harder dance sounds

KATSEYE brought techno-leaning dance sounds to The O2 in London on 4 September 2026, according to a Digital Music News trend feature, written by Ben Jolley with How Music Charts and powered by Chartmetric. The piece uses the show as evidence that K-pop's trademark EDM production is giving way to something harder.

The feature reports that the group, who it says had already toured the UK and Europe before heading to America, played to what it calls an extremely young fanbase who "will likely not have experienced such intense sounds before". That is the publication's assessment rather than something drawn from audience research. It adds that KATSEYE performed as Daniela, Lara, Megan and Yoonchae, two members down for health reasons, in support of their recent EP. It describes a "hedonistic rendition" of 'PINKY UP' and a "ravey reimagining" of 'Gnarly' at the show.

A trend across several acts

Digital Music News names LE SSERAFIM's 'CELEBRATION', BLACKPINK's 'JUMP', ILLIT's 'It's Me' and IVE's 'BANG BANG' alongside KATSEYE as tracks that have swapped EDM for something closer to "Berghain-primed hardstyle". The terminology is loose. The feature variously talks of hard techno, hardstyle and, in a review from The Bias List, a hardstyle/gabber moment near the end of 'CELEBRATION'. The harder-dance label here is the publication's own framing, and the sources it quotes use different reference points.

The figures it cites are Chartmetric-style streaming and social numbers. 'PINKY UP', the most-played track from KATSEYE's 'WILD', had 235.7M Spotify streams and 1.88BN TikTok views as of late September. ILLIT's 'It's Me' has 162M Spotify streams, which the feature says is more than ten times any other track on the 'MAMIHLAPINATAPAI' EP.

Lim on the UK dance lineage

The main voice is David Lim, who works with LE SSERAFIM and aespa at The Outside Organisation (UK). His account is measured. He says K-pop is "beginning to gravitate towards a different flavour of dance music, something grittier and glitchier rather than cold, expansive and industrial".

The source does not trace UK rave history in any detail, but Lim places the shift in a longer cycle. He says K-pop has seen house, UK garage, dubstep and bounce flow in and out of popularity over the past few decades. He suggests the recent turn may owe something to the wider popularity of harder styles, pointing to Charli xcx's 'Brat' and peers such as Shygirl and PinkPantheress, and citing 2024 as the turning point. He also points to aespa's 'Supernova' and 'Whiplash' and LE SSERAFIM's 'Crazy', after which, he recalls, "the BPMs had started rising".

He links the sound to touring as well. Harder beats, he says, allow performers "to show off sharper, high-intensity choreography", and he cites festival slots and stadium dates as places where a dance track creates crowd-jumping moments.

Fans meeting techno through pop

"really fun and interesting to think about a younger audience having these tracks as their gateway into techno and rave music"

That is Lim's phrasing, and it is the closest the source comes to the question of what the shift means for new listeners. He also says the sound is "obviously not suited to every K-pop artist and their audience".

Critics are not unanimous. THE FADER ran a feature in which India Roby and Tobias Hess disagreed over 'PINKY UP'. Roby called it "subversive brainrot that's been cranked to the max", while Hess pointed to "the chorus's hard techno brutalism" as the musical headline.

The feature also notes crossover from the club side: horsegiirL brought out BLACKPINK's JENNIE at a Lollapalooza Chicago after-party in August, and Sara Landry remixed 'CELEBRATION' in May. As of 7 October, Landry's edit had 1.4M TikTok views and 536.1K Spotify streams. Whether harder dance K-pop tracks will climb the charts globally, the feature says, remains to be seen.