The lineup for the 2026 Weverse Con Festival, coming to Seoul’s Olympic Park on June 6 and 7, is quite the interesting one. Even with the strong K-pop showing, there’s a smattering of Korean bands and other artists with rock at their core. There is some precedent here. Back in March, “BTS THE CITY ARIRANG SEOUL,” held to mark the release of the boy band’s album “ARIRANG,” featured a wide variety of independent artists including Sanmanhan, Jeon Jin Hee, SamSan, KIM PUREUM, Park Soeun, Laybricks, Yeoyu and Seolbin, and Nerd Connection. It speaks to the fact that, even as K-pop has come to describe a specific segment of the music industry and its conventions, listeners of Korean music still use it as a catch-all term for Korean popular music in general as well. And with that in mind, bands like TOUCHED, LUCY, Sin In Ryu, Dabda, and LEENALCHI have seen bigger and bigger audiences as they’re positioned as an alternative option for young listeners. Here are five Korean bands from the Weverse Con lineup that you should check out today.

TOUCHED
The earth beneath your feet shakes. At rock festivals, TOUCHED makes their presence felt not through what you see or hear but through waves running through the very ground you stand on. Kim Seungbin, John B. Kim, and Chea Dohyeon spread out a wide rock feast with tight playing, but the exclamation point is lead singer Yunmin. He builds tension in the air through his expert control of tempo and emotion, then finally lets loose like a firecracker going off—and it’s that voice that makes TOUCHED the most powerful band to emerge in recent memory. Even with a relatively small back catalog since first grabbing the world’s attention through the audition reality show “Great Seoul Invasion,” TOUCHED has kept their name on the tip of tongues through countless festivals and competitions, becoming one of the most booked acts on the Korean festival circuit.

All alumni of the Seoul Institute of the Arts, the group brings serious musicianship to everything they do, and they’ve got even more history to back it up—they were the first band ever to win the top prize at YOO JAE HA MUSIC CONCOURS, a competition that has launched endless musicians’ careers. With songs with clear dramatic arcs, arrangements that invite crowd participation, and universally relatable lyrics about love and consolation, you can jump right into the action with the rest of the crowd without hesitation. TOUCHED’s next goal is to establish a distinct musical voice and sharpen their sound, drawing on the wealth of experience they’ve built in front of cameras, at competitions, on TV, and on festival stages. As June brings summer weather to Olympic Park, will Weverse Con be the moment we finally see a massive mosh pit form? If it happens, TOUCHED will be at the center.

LUCY
LUCY is a four-piece band formed through the JTBC audition show “SuperBand,” and on May 17 they wrapped their ninth concert, “ISLAND,” at KSPO Dome. Coming off a successful world tour before bassist CHO WON SANG’s military service, and held to mark the release of their second studio album, “Childish,” the concert was proof that a band that built its fanbase through a reality show can sustain real, lasting popularity in the music industry in the 2020s.

LUCY first started to turn heads during the TV competition for their use of ambient sound, and with violinist SHIN GWANG IL and six-string bassist and lead producer CHO WON SANG at the helm, they’ve expanded the tonal palette of their music far beyond what you’d expect from a rock band. SHIN GWANG IL’s violin in particular made it immediately clear on the band’s debut single, “Flowering,” that LUCY was capable of creating a sound entirely their own, and it remains their defining sound, adding depth and dimension to everything they make.

LUCY draws freely from the lush melodies and layered arrangements that have made J-pop bands so popular in Korea since the pandemic, while musically carrying forward the bright, youthful sensibility of their predecessors in the K-rock scene, like PEPPERTONES, Daybreak, and DPNS. The choral section that closes out “All Ages,” the lead single off the band’s new album and which features WIZARD CHILDREN’S CHOIR, is something to look forward to when they take to the Weverse Con stage at Olympic Park this month. On a personal note, I’d like to recommend album opener “Sprout,” SHIN GWANG IL and CHOI SANG YEOP’s youthful anthem with Irish strings and crisp guitar.

Shin In Ryu
Shin In Ryu, who also played “BTS THE CITY ARIRANG SEOUL” at Yeouido Hangang River Park back in March, began a new chapter last year when their debut studio album “Shining Strike” won Best Alternative Rock Album at the 23rd Korean Music Awards. The band debuted in 2018 with the single “Your word” as a five-piece, and now plays as a trio consisting of Shin Onyu, Moon Junghwan, and Ha Hyungeon. Even before releasing their album, Shin In Ryu had already built a following of indie heads through word of mouth and crossed over to a wider audience thanks to their EPs “For us, summer is always short” and “WE WISH.docx,” along with their hit song “Fairy Castor.” “Shining Strike” represents a sophisticated shelter where the band’s long-held gift for wistful storytelling and emotional songwriting meets a fairy-tale-like imagination.

Shin In Ryu conveys a message of comfort, encouragement, and care to the backdrop of the fictional world of Soul Village. They’re exploring something many bands do in an era where the word “love” gets thrown around too easily. What sets Shin In Ryu apart is how good they are at drawing you in. The songwriting draws on the feel of Japanese city pop and AOR from the ’70s and ’80s, and foregrounds writing that draws from the best Korean singer-songwriters and bands of the early 2000s, like Roller Coaster and Loveholic. It’s a carefully built structure where every layer emphasizes a different kind of soul—the carefree energy of youth, a longing to spread one’s wings, the solitude of wounds that haven’t quite healed—and holding it all together is Shin In Ryu’s peacefully clear music. Few bands like them so perfectly encapsulate the vibe that young Korean listeners are looking for in their indie bands today.

Dabda
Dabda is a four-piece math rock band consisting of Jiae Kim, Jungwoong Park, Keohyun Noh, and Seunghyun Lee. They’re celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, having debuted with the EP “Island of Each” in 2016. Their first studio album, “But, All The Shining Things Are,” came out in the thick of the pandemic in 2020, and showcased the band’s wild energy within a vast soundscape. They’ve been building an international profile ever since, releasing the single “Jungle Gym” with drummer Takashi Kashikura from toe—another math rock band—and putting on a world tour in support of their EP “Yonder.” In their early days the band used to describe their sound as “pastel psychedelic,” but they’ve since built a musical foundation solid enough to defy description. It’s a swirl of breathtaking vocals, dynamic music that never stops transforming, and a touching belief in grand hopes and dreams.

Currently at work on their second studio album, Dabda offered a preview in March with “Dear Hope,” a song about the band’s vision of hope, sculpted through endless echoes of their own sound. At six minutes and 10 seconds, different sonic layers stack and separate, operate independently, and finally fuse into one, sending starlight every which way and unfolding in a brilliant aurora that encompasses everything the band’s been through over the past decade. With explosive concerts that have the power to move audiences beyond emotions that words can describe, this is a band you have to see live to fully experience. Anticipation is high for their festival performances this summer and the coming album.

LEENALCHI
Whether you’re Korean or not, if you’ve encountered Korean content in any form, you’ve almost certainly come across LEENALCHI at least once, largely thanks to a promotional video they made with the Korea Tourism Organization and the Ambiguous Dance Company back in 2020. With the whole world locked down, the “Feel the Rhythm of KOREA” campaign brilliantly showcased different regions around the country—and it worked because of LEENALCHI’s disco pop reinterpretations of traditional Korean music and pansori—Intangible Cultural Heritage under UNESCO—alongside the exhilarating choreography of Ambiguous Dance Company. The band opened up new possibilities for Korean traditional music, ranging from their hit “Tiger is Coming”—one of the defining cultural moments of that year—to their reinterpretation of the comic “Sugungga,” one of the five episodes in the pansori canon.

Now LEENALCHI has their sights set even further. They signed on with Luaka Bop, the label founded by former Talking Heads member David Byrne, a man who’s been driven to preserve music through his fascination by and deep interest in music from all around the world. LEENALCHI’s lineup, too, has settled into place after frequent changeups. Music director Jang Young Gyu, who’s provided songs for some 100 films, done stints with Uhuhboo Project and SsingSsing, and anchors LEENALCHI’s sound, holds down the rhythm on bass alongside EJae of Hyodo and BASE. Ahn Yi-ho leads the pansori singers, joined by Choi Su-in, Park Soobum, and Ra Seojin. The band’s approach of coming up with an idea and freely creating and warping sound, like sampling from the vast pansori repertoire, feels far removed from any sense of nationalistic duty to globalize Korea’s traditional music or put the country’s sound on the world stage. They just want to make people dance and have a good time. The band sets off to North America and Europe this month on a world tour.