Intersections, station platforms, building lobbies, the middle of the street. These are the kinds of everyday urban spaces the music video for “INSTANT CRUSH,” the titular track off aoen’s new single album, finds the group members in. These are places where the bustle of crowds is typically endless, but here, everyone stands frozen as if time has stood still—everyone, that is, except aoen. Then, as soon as SOTA says the words “down bad in a heartbeat,” the world springs back to life. It might last only a moment in the same way “that streetlights can change in an instant,” but the second your heart moves, the world rearranges itself into something completely different. That’s what aoen is getting at in “INSTANT CRUSH”—that “the rules of the world can flip just like that.”

The world around them hasn’t changed, but the boys have now that they’ve fallen in love. The music video for “Seishun Incredibles”, the eponymous track off their previous single album, was set in a school and followed a boy falling in love for the first time, surrounded by friends. The music video for the track “MXMM” that immediately follows cuts repeatedly to shots of the boys watching the girl he has a crush on (but who doesn’t feel the same way back). The “INSTANT CRUSH” video takes a different approach. Rather than having a story or a love interest, it revolves around shots of the group members staring straight into the camera. The close-up shots of each of them are especially striking, capturing that sudden surging blue wave and laying bare the turbulence going on inside them. That’s what makes the sequence near the end of the video just before REO says the line “down bad in a heartbeat” and the music stops, the camera moving from face to face of each member of the group caught in the grip of love, a perfect encapsulation of what this whole album is about. And in the same way that they cockily sing, “These feelings, these vibes, grown ups can’t understand,” “INSTANT CRUSH” keeps its focus in the moment, squarely on the “wave” of emotion itself.

The attitude in “INSTANT CRUSH” that one second is enough to fall in love and that you should trust your gut without a second thought can sound a lot like youthful recklessness (“Don’t know the definition or theory of love, and I couldn’t care less / Trust what I feel, nothing else matters, is my Answer”) but maybe being able to let yourself be swept away like that is one of the privileges of being young. The lyrics to “Offline”—“accept me as I am … don’t hide anything, the light or the dark”—sum up that same attitude succinctly. Musically, “Offline” captures that same emotional volatility through the dramatic arrangement. The jazzy vocals in the bridge and the falsetto ad-libbing that comes with the line “just feel who you are” early on with the chorus are both touches that add to the song’s overall dynamic feel. The part later in the song that naturally beckons the listener to sing along builds the emotions even higher with the repeated refrain of “feel who you are.”

While “Offline” conveys turbulent emotions through a full, rich sound, the track that follows focuses on exploring the inner world of a boy in love in raw, unfiltered language. “Crashing out , I love you…” unfolds over a bouncy melody and rhythmic beat that feel like an expression of giddy excitement, but the lyrics tell a different story, laying bare the dizzy, chaotic feelings underneath. The lyrics juxtapose contradictory feelings (“I love you but I really can’t stand you / Wait, I love you, I miss you, but I wanna run away”) as the singer wavers in the face of confusion (“I wanna know the answer, but I don’t wanna know”), but aoen doesn’t let that “out of control” ripple of emotions faze them. By the time the album closes with the fan dedication song “BLUE DIARY,” the group’s promising not to hide “a heart that overflows before words can catch up” and to chase after “landscapes we haven’t yet seen,” embracing even the inexperience and uncertainty that come with young love.

“Back when everything was grey, I wore no expression on my face.” The “INSTANT CRUSH” music video opens with a spoken word section. “Just searching for meaning in endlessly repeating days. Then I saw a break in the clouds. Ever since you appeared.” At a moment of dramatic changes like this, aoen chooses to look their own feelings directly in the face rather than be swayed by what’s happening around them or what others might think. The “blue wave” they sing about on “INSTANT CRUSH” transcends childishness and youthful inexperience, becoming instead the energy of that age that throws itself headfirst into things without fear. The courage to face yourself with clear eyes—that’s what you’re hearing aoen talk about when they sing about being young.

The “INSTANT CRUSH” music video ends with SOTA standing alone in the middle of an intersection in the dead of night. Where he’s headed, and what’s waiting for him at the end, is still uncertain, but it feels like these boys could go anywhere now, following the clearest signpost there is—themselves.