Katseye Was Built for This

Katseye wears All Clothing and Accessories Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.

You know when you’re at the airport or IKEA, and you catch a kid going through the motions of a dance they learned on TikTok, but in the most lobotomized way possible? Katseye, a new global K-pop girl group with only one Korean member, inspires that same subconscious impulse to perform a little dance to nobody in particular. Except when they do it, namely to the tune of their hit single “Touch,” their facial muscles turn razor sharp, their form is flawless, and their voices sound like people you hear on the radio. It’s mindless, maybe, but in the way an Olympic swimmer doesn’t have to think about swimming, or how I don’t have to remember to breathe, unless I took an edible on an empty stomach.

Manon wears T-shirt, Bag Charm, and Times Square Tabby Bag with Quilting Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.

Sophia wears Jacket, Dress, Brooch, Bag Charms, Times Square Tabby Bag with Quilting, and Socks Coach.

“I’m addicted to living in a girl world,” says photographer Morgan Maher, who’s on set with Katseye on the East Side of L.A. If you’ve been on a photo shoot before, you know that thing where people on set deadpan the phrase “sO cUTe” repeatedly, but Maher sells it. To borrow a term from the fitness community, Sophia, Manon, Lara, Yoonchae, Daniela, and Megan from Katseye are trained. They’ve been doing this since they were plucked from obscurity in a 120,000-person calfcall for the hit Netflix series Pop Star Academy: Katseye, which details the painstaking process of performing to the standards of Geffen Records and Hybe, a South Korean entertainment conglomerate responsible for BTS, NewJeans, and dozens of other K-pop groups. (Their training gets so intense that they’re down a girl, as Megan is currently benched for a dance-related back injury.) With ages ranging from 17 to 22, the Katseye members are young enough to not know a world where content creation didn’t exist. They were born for—and into—this.

Lara wears Shirt, Tie, Bag, Socks, and Shoes Coach.

Morgan hands Yoonchae, Katseye’s youngest member, a vintage camcorder and gives her instructions on how to film herself, and she takes to this ancient technology like a duck to water. Katseye’s debut EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong), a fivesong, 12-minute run of postmodern Destiny’s Child and Pussycat Doll–style bops, captures that once-in-a-career moment when a new group’s spirit has yet to be polished into oblivion. In Pop Star Academy, you’ll see them endure a kind of emotional and physical pain foreign to most teenagers. I gobbled up Netflix’s (unfortunately dark) Cheer and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making The Team, and while Pop Star Academy—and before it, Hybe’s Weverse competition show The Debut: Dream Academy, through which Katseye’s members were chosen—follows that same formula, it goes down easier when it’s set to the music of Robyn and Ariana instead of boomer pop-country or schizophrenic Floridian cheerleader music.

Daniela wears Sweatshirt Coach.

Yoonchae wears Sweater, Shorts, Bow, Brooklyn Shoulder Bag 39, Socks, and Shoes Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.

“Sing ‘Teenage Dream’!” Morgan says to the girls, who are crammed into the photographer’s Volvo convertible—the kind of car a sensible, dreaming teenager from Maryland might seek out. Megan asks the other Katseye girls to act like LAX hired them to welcome visitors—their version of a Hawaiian lei ceremony but with sounds more screeching than soothing. This’s the easy part. As the girls break for lunch (Mediterranean mezze from Atwater Village’s Dune), they assemble at a long table—cafeteria seating at Euphoria High— while their managers, PR, and legal guardians tap and scroll their way through lunch. Daniela throws her red hoodie over the AirPods Max to disassociate a bit before returning to hair and makeup, while Manon lies on the ground outside, hoping to soak up a few more hits of sunshine before the summer is over.

All Clothing and Accessories Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.

All Clothing and Accessories Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.

It’s hard not to compare a new contending pop star group to the existing competition. Blackpink is defragmenting its stars to start projects of their own, and I assume the same for BTS. But Katseye are still small fish in a deep pond. Like so many girl groups before them, they’re singing, dancing, touring, and recording while simultaneously auditioning to be pulled up for a solo career, to be the next Jennie, Lisa, Nicole, or Beyoncé—the final frontier. For now, though, it’s pure sisterhood.

All Clothing, Accessories, Times Square Tabby Bag with Quilting, and Brooklyn Shoulder Bag 39 Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.

All Clothing and Accessories Coach © KFS ™ Hearst.