Late last summer, the members of the girl group Katseye were on their way to meet Olivia Rodrigo at her Guts tour when they received a message from their A&R. It was a potential track for their sophomore EP, and as it came through the speakers, the beat they heard was frenzied, disorienting, and obnoxiously catchy. It was, for lack of a better word … “Gnarly.”
“Immediately we were like, That’s a banger,” singer Manon Bannerman recalls.
The song became the lead single for Katseye’s new record, Beautiful Chaos, released on June 26. It premiered to mixed reactions. But when the group performed the track live the following day, the switch-up was almost immediate. Suddenly, “Gnarly” was inescapable, thrown into contention for song of the summer, and earning Katseye their first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
Katseye has made headlines since the day the group was born. Two years ago, K-pop conglomerate HYBE and Geffen Records joined forces to launch a new idea: they put out a casting call for the first “global girl group,” fielding 120,000 submissions from eager young applicants all over the world. The most promising candidates left their homes and families behind for a K-pop training program in L.A., which was documented in the 2024 Netflix series, Pop Star Academy.
It was grueling and intense, transforming the trainees from hungry, ambitious hopefuls into elite performers capable of executing meticulous choreography while nailing their vocals and exuding the kind of star power that could launch a thousand stan accounts. The trial by fire culminated in the announcement of six winners: Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Bannerman, Megan Skiendiel, Sophia Laforteza, and Yoonchae Jeung.
Ranging in age from 17-22 years old, the girls came from vastly different backgrounds—hailing from Atlanta, New York, Zürich, Honolulu, Manila, and Seoul, respectively. Over the course of the competition, fans saw that each member also had different strengths. Avanzini and Skiendiel were star dancers, Laforteza and Raj wowed the coaches with their vocals, and Bannerman and Jeung had major stage presence plus creative direction skills. Individually, they each had an It factor, and with their breakthrough single, “Touch”—an airy, bubblegum bop that went viral on TikTok—they proved they had the chemistry to take off as a group.
Now, exactly a year after their debut single, Katseye is setting that era on fire. Where their first EP, SIS, was defined by soft pastels and dreamy visuals, Beautiful Chaos is full of bold reds, jet black, and neon greens. It’s high-contrast, loud, unserious, and bold.
“SIS was like a breath of fresh air,” Skiendiel says. “We were brand-new to the scene, and introducing ourselves to the world. Now, we want to showcase more of our grit. This is a deeper dive into who we are, where every song is a completely different vibe, a different emotion. It feels like we’ve really grown.”
“Gnarly” was the flash-bang ushering in a new epoch for the band. The girls were aware it might set people off, but they also knew it had all the makings of a modern pop smash: a divisive sound, an infectious hook, and viral choreography. “We figured there would be big reactions to it,” Laforteza says. “It was a lot, but we held onto that feeling because we believed in the power of our performance. We saw the vision from the beginning.”
Last year, when the group began the initial conversations about their sophomore EP, they assembled mood boards and PDFs of inspiration, trying to map out their direction. When they were recording SIS, they’d only been together as a group for a few months and were still feeling things out. This time around, the group was more in control.
“We were really involved with the creation and the concept for this EP,” Raj says. “We wanted to be more powerful, and push the boundaries more than we did last time.”
A year in, the group is eager to embrace their differences and lean into their varied tastes and instincts. In the run-up to the EP, Raj took the reins on producing a “Gnarly” remix with Lancey Foux and Slush Puppy. And for the group’s second single, “Gabriela,” Daniela paid homage to her heritage with a Spanish verse on the Latin-pop track co-written by Charli xcx. Originally, it was undecided whether Avanzini or a featured artist would be the one to sing it.
“I basically said, I need to do this,” Avanzini recalls. “I wanted to connect with my Latin community, because some people don’t know that I can speak Spanish. It’s also definitely something we want to do more of in the future—incorporating our cultures into our music, and showing people where we come from.”
Katseye’s multicultural backgrounds have allowed them to connect with fans all over the world, but they’ve also brought on challenges, too. Being women of color in the public eye, they’ve each had to navigate the toxic world of online harassment and racist cyberbullying.
“It’s an honor to be in this position, but it’s also quite difficult,” Raj says. “I’m Indian, but because my nationality is American, people try to invalidate my connection to my culture, and it’s the same for several of us here. People will say what they want to say, but at the end of the day, they don’t know the real tea, so we’ll continue to do what we do and take the responsibility as the honor it should be.”
The members of Katseye have also been subjected to online speculation about their sexualities. Earlier this year, both Raj and Skiendiel came out as queer—in the K-pop world, openly LGBTQ+ idols are still a massive rarity—and while they’ve both felt welcomed and celebrated by the community, they also acknowledged how the theorizing played a role in their decision to come out.
“People were doing that to us, along with fetishizing, and sexualizing us, and I don’t think it was okay,” says Raj. “By coming out, we put an end to the conversation and took control of our own narrative rather than letting other people write it for us. I wish that wasn’t something we had to get used to, but we’ll continue speaking out and supporting the queer community because that’s important to every single one of us.”
While they’re not penning their own tracks (yet), the songs they’ve chosen and identify with for the EP still send a message. It’s notable, for instance, that Beautiful Chaos’s “Mean Girls” includes the line, “God bless the T girls / And all the in-between girls.” (Katseye collaborated with Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, on a “Gnarly” dance video.)
In so many ways, the group has already managed to break out of the traditional girl group mold. They’ve won over fans by being unrehearsed, open, and real. They’ve managed to blend their K-pop training with their global influences and approach to stardom. And with Beautiful Chaos, they’re hoping to show the world something new.
“We want to be legendary,” Raj says. “Iconic,” echoes Bannerman. “At the very top,” Avanzini adds. “And we want to be the kind of timeless girl group that shifted culture and made a genuine impact,” Skiendiel says.
“We’re not trying to prove anything, we’re just being ourselves,” Laforteza says. “We’re passionate about making music, and about our sisterhood, and we want to show the world who we are.”
