There’s a reason gemstones catch the eye from every angle. Depending on the angle, they flash different colors. Even a single color shifts in hue and brightness to reveal new facets in the light. And TREASURE’s music works the same way. The group resists being stuck with any one color, constantly giving themselves a new paint job as they go. In “THE FIRST STEP” series, they broke from the YG mold with the easy breezy blue of tracks like “BOY” and “MY TREASURE.” In more emotionally direct songs like “I LOVE YOU” and “MMM,” they reached for something closer to a deep red.

Then came “THE SECOND STEP” series, and they turned up the heat. “THE SECOND STEP: CHAPTER ONE” pushed intense songs like “JIKJIN” to the forefront while still making room for cozier tracks like “DARARI.” It went beyond red to become a blue flame. The follow-up “THE SECOND STEP: CHAPTER TWO,” meanwhile, blazed orange with the high-energy dance song “HELLO.” “BONA BONA,” the lead single off their second studio album, “REBOOT,” was all camo green, while the two mini albums that followed, “PLEASURE” and “LOVE PULSE,” introduced the warm sunset of “YELLOW” and the shimmering purple of “PARADISE.”

Having already traversed the entire color spectrum, TREASURE strips away all color in one go with their fourth mini album, “NEW WAV.” There isn’t a sense of lacking, however, so much as convergence and expansion. Mix every shade of paint together and you approach black. Concentrate every wavelength of light together and you get white. Black and white only look like an absence of color, but they’re actually the most paradoxical state of all, containing—or capable of taking on—every color there is. “NEW WAV” stands at the center of that paradox, a blend of the years the TREASURE members have lived through that also hints at a future that’s yet to be painted.

The energy of all colors mixed into black
The music on “NEW WAV” moves less like a static color than a current in motion. It shatters, sprints, accelerates, detonates. Filling the album with an intense hip hop sound might feel like a move inherited from the YG Entertainment playbook, but that alone can’t account for everything this album is saying. “NEW WAV” shows what brilliant flash of light there is to see when the light representing the agency’s legacy passes through TREASURE. Put another way, TREASURE spends the album painting a coat of raw vitality over everything YG has built.

In that sense, their decision to make the lead single “IF I” a rage song reads less like a grab at the latest hip hop trend than an attempt to recolor YG’s long-accumulated hip hop heritage at TREASURE’s own tempo. There’s a kitschy synth overtop a minimal beat, an aggressive vibe with a hard-hitting rhythm, raw vocals, and a closing chant that brings every one of the boys’ voices together. The song reimagines TREASURE in ways that feel unfamiliar while holding on hard to the forward momentum they’ve always made their signature.

“ZOOM ZOOM” mixes in even deeper shades of YG’s heritage. Over a sound reminiscent of 1TYM, TREASURE compares falling for the one you’re fated to meet to the rush of a car racing full speed ahead. “NALLY-NA,” from TREASURE’s hip hop/EDM subunit HYUNHAYO, drives the energy up in a single surge with a looping hook and a well-placed drop. On the closing track, “DANGER,” the album’s darker energy takes a turn that evokes gothic comics or an eerie haunted house. The music draws on classic horror vibes to give the track a sinister, tense atmosphere, but TREASURE doesn’t play it heavy. Instead, they layer in something cartoonish and playful, capturing both the thrill and the uncertainty of a love that belongs to the blind.

The inherent weight, intensity, and raw attitude of hip hop, combined with rage’s sharp synths, EDM drops, club banger instant gratification, and gothic horror kitsch, all comes together to give “NEW WAV” its deepest blacks. The black of this album isn’t darkness so much as excess. When every facet of sound, tempo, genre, and attitude converges until nothing can be separated, that’s when TREASURE’s music reaches its deepest shade.

Proving themselves on a white canvas
The sound of “NEW WAV” is a heavy black of every color of paint mixed together, but the attitude running throughout the album is a white canvas of infinite possibility—a space where they can choose, capture, blend, and repaint in any color they want. And the first color TREASURE squeezes onto the “NEW WAV” canvas is a shade of self-validation.

At the very center of that is the lead single, “IF I.” TREASURE isn’t competing with anyone here—they’re addressing themselves. “Hiding my potential like it’s criminal” sounds like they’re making it clear that they’re done keeping what they’re capable of sealed away, and “Me versus me errday” shows that the battle isn’t with other people’s opinions but something inside the group members themselves. Rather than explaining what they’ve been, TREASURE decides to tell us what they want and what they can ultimately become. The noise and the heat, being the force that makes everyone move in a space they dominate. A stage persona or alter ego they take on to wow their audience.

The same wavelength pulses through the subunit song “NALLY-NA.” Within the walls of the party, HYUNHAYO’s in charge. They direct everybody to start “Movin’ to the left / Now bring it back for finesse” and keep it simple with lines like “We like to party.” The reason they can sing it out without reservation is simple—the “whole squad leveled up and running this town / Callin’ shots.” That sense of control is exactly why things go off (“nally-na”) whenever they show up.

The same attitude of validation applies to the album’s approach to love, too. On “NEW WAV,” love isn’t a feeling that leaves the singer in pieces or sends them adrift in emotion. If anything, it’s what brings TREASURE’s self-assurance into perfect focus. “ZOOM ZOOM” uses speed as a metaphor to turn falling in love into pure momentum, and “DANGER” cleverly captures what’s left when reason falls away and you’re swallowed whole by feelings for someone else.

TREASURE loaded up their white canvas with every color they’ve explored since their debut, mixed them together in a bold swirl, and turned them into the deep black of “NEW WAV.” But things don’t stop there just because they’ve made that one shade of black. They can pick out new colors at any time, making new combinations to their heart’s content until it’s just the way they want it. Somewhere between the intensely deep black of every color blended together and the blank white base with the potential to become anything, “NEW WAV” proves that TREASURE always has the option to choose a new color and add it to the mix.