It’s just before 9 a.m., and the girls of Katseye are already dressed and ready for rehearsals ahead of the 2025 Kids’ Choice Awards. They sometimes let out a little yawn while answering questions, but Sophia, Manon, Lara, Yoonchae, Megan, and Daniela are hyped for the week ahead as they gear up to drop their sophomore EP, Beautiful Chaos, on Friday.
“It’s us stepping into our maturity,” says Lara. “I feel like this era, we have been a lot more authentically ourselves. I don’t have to put on a facade of any kind when talking to anyone anymore. I think that’s a beautiful thing, and you can see that more within the album. You see more of our fire.”
It’s undeniable: Katseye is going through their biggest moment yet. Formed in November 2023, the Geffen/Hybe artists have quickly risen as the present and future of the pop girl group. The six members were handpicked after competing on the Netflix reality show Dream Academy, making it to the top out of 20 finalists, chosen from nearly 120,000 hopefuls wanting to be part of a new K-pop-styled band. The Netflix series followed the top 20 finalists as they took on challenges sharpening their dance skills, vocal abilities, and star quality. Their rise as a six-piece has been fast, and they’ve already built a massive following of EYEKONS who follow their every move. On their first EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong), they introduced their chemistry and delivered a hit, “Touch,” which became a mainstay on TikTok, thanks to its infectious chorus and fun-to-learn dance routine. With Beautiful Chaos, the group proves that their strong friendship and shining individuality is here to stay.
“We can’t fake this,” admits Sophia. “We all have that shared goal of Katseye’s success and we really nurtured our friendship a lot. We got really lucky.”
“We really, really, really spent so much time together and put in a lot of effort to develop our relationship with each other,” adds Lara. “This isn’t something you could manufacture or develop. It’s a genuine friendship with a deep bond.”
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Members of past girl groups, including Little Mix and Fifth Harmony, have frequently said that what made being in a group so difficult was having to hold in their individuality for their brand as a collective. The opposite rings true in Katseye, where each of the women’s individuality and cultures are celebrated — it’s part of the “global girl group” identity Hybe and Geffen set out to build when they started the search for the group.
Lara, for example, is often photographed in a bindi or wearing attire celebrating her South Asian heritage, while Daniela, who’s of Cuban descent, sings the bridge to their latest single “Gabriela” in Spanish. “We really are pushed to shine individually with our strengths,” says Sophia, who’s Filipina. “We’re Katseye members first, but we also shine on our own.”
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Beautiful Chaos shows off the diversity in their styles and vocal versatility. There’s pop, R&B, a ballad, and “Gnarly,” the polarizing campy single that kicked off a dance trend and quickly earned the group their second big hit after 2024’s “Touch.” Manon says making their second EP felt “so authentic who we are right now” in both their lyricism and the manifestation of their artistry, and it’s also a “very transitional” EP for the group, as Sophia explains it.
“We’ve paid a lot more attention to detail,” says Manon. “It’s been a really fun experience and it feels authentic to us.”
The five-track EP closes with what they all agree is their favorite song, “M.I.A.” It’s a stadium-ready anthem, more in line with girl groups like Blackpink, the kind of track made to be sung back by a crowd. “We screamed when we heard it,” says Daniela.
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“This is exactly our taste,” adds Lara. “I think the production is fire and we really showed our individuality.”
“Game Boy,” the girls say, is like a sequel to “Touch, and made for the fans who enjoyed that era. “It’s a feel-good song and like an elevated ‘Touch,’” says Megan. “I’m excited for ‘Game Boy’ because it’s going the favorite of the Eyekons really like our ‘Touch’ era,” adds Yoonchae.
Manon steps up to talk about their single “Mean Girls,” a slower ballad that offers love to the “dream girls, free girls,” and “even the mean girls.” On it, the girls sing: “This is why I hate the internet, you’re not gonna kill my happiness.”
During Dream Academy, Manon faced an unfair level of backlash from people who questioned her place in the group. Now, she’s putting any narratives to rest. “A lot of us got called mean girls after the documentary dropped and all these narratives started running, so it’s kind of an homage to that,” Manon says. “It’s giving killing them with kindness. This song is closing a chapter.”
“Mean Girls” also ends with the girls declaring, “God bless the T girls, and all the in-between girls.” Since their formation, Katseye has been open about their closeness to queerness — two of the members are bi — and just how much the LGBTQ community has shaped both their artistry and their fandom. But the community has also played a closer role: For a recent performance, trans designer Gigi Goode crafted custom looks for the group, and they even posted a video dancing with Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk’s estranged trans daughter. (It might’ve been a tongue-in-cheek nod to their Tesla reference on “Gnarly.”)
“We work a lot with he trans community all the time, whether it’s fashion or music,” says Lara. “We are constantly around trans women, and I think we have so much love and respect for them. We wanted to shout them out.”
For Beautiful Chaos, the group’s studio process started with the girls being played songs and offered pre-selected verses and parts to try out. Manon says having a team guiding the creative process is helpful, but once they’re in the booth, they’ll “try each other’s parts,” and whatever sounds best is what makes the cut. They also have a group therapist who allows them a “safe space” to work through any issues that could come up with being young adults navigating stardom together in a group.
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What rings true — and is palpable even over Zoom call early in the A.M. — is that the women have built a sisterhood that translates through their music and online interactions. The girls finish each other’s sentences and nod in agreement with each other’s answers to questions, and they’re on the same page when it comes to what they want Katseye to be.
“I don’t know if the ‘Oh, we’re coworkers, so we can operate like that,’ would really work for us,” says Lara. “I feel like the friendship, the true bond that we have is what makes this truly so fun, even if we have a bad day or something crazy happens.”
