Red Velvet, Jennie, and i-dle All Made the Same Quiet Summer Song This Year

K-pop's summer formula has a well-worn shape: bright synths, driving beats, choreography designed for a festival stage under full sun. This year, a cluster of major artists quietly ignored all of it.

Red Velvet, Jennie, i-dle, Hearts2Hearts, and NCT Wish each released summer material in 2026, and each landed in roughly the same sonic space, restrained, warm, bossa nova-tinged, lo-fi adjacent. Whether that's a coordinated industry pivot or five separate instincts arriving at the same answer is harder to say, but music critic Lim Hee-yun thinks it signals something real.

"Softer guitar tones, relaxed rhythms, jazz-influenced harmonies and understated production are being used to evoke the season without relying on the bright synths, driving beats and explosive choruses that have traditionally characterized K-pop's summer hits," Lim said. "Summer songs used to focus almost exclusively on excitement and release. Today, listeners seem to be also drawn to music that captures the slower, more atmospheric moments of the season."

Red Velvet sets the clearest example

The most direct case is Red Velvet's Velvet Summer, the group's first seasonal EP in eight years. The lead track "Surfin' Boy" pulls from bossa nova guitar, reggae rhythms, and a low-key house groove, a marked departure from the high-wattage energy of "Red Flavor" or "Power Up." SM Entertainment published a Q&A ahead of the release in which member Wendy framed the choice deliberately: summer, she said, is also a season of slow, carefree days, and the group "wanted to capture a more mature and relaxed side of the season." Seulgi added that bossa nova felt immediately suited to their voices the moment she heard the demo.

It's a striking call for a group whose "red" identity has long been associated with exuberance. The EP reads less like a summer party and more like the afternoon after one.

The trend runs wider than one group

Hearts2Hearts took a similar route on "Babysteps," a side track from their second EP Lemon Tang. The title track delivered a brighter sound, but "Babysteps" tucked bossa nova-style chord progressions beneath contemporary pop production, a more understated corner of the same record.

NCT Wish had already gone there earlier in the year with "Sticky," a midtempo hip-hop track with bossa nova-style guitar lines that dropped in March. Fans latched onto it as a summer listen anyway, which suggests the appetite for this kind of sound predates the season.

i-dle's summer single "Gimme Dat Love" favors warm guitar textures and an easygoing groove over the group's previous summer releases, "Klaxon" and "Dumdi Dumdi" being the reference points, trading their usual high-energy dance floor approach for something considerably more laid-back.

Jennie's contribution is "Less than a Lover," an alternative pop track she described as a song written "while thinking about summer." Lo-fi guitar pairs with vintage electric keyboard sounds across the track, landing somewhere closer to a late-night mood board than a stadium moment.

What it means

None of these releases were made in consultation with each other, which makes the convergence more interesting than any single act's creative choice. Bossa nova and jazz-pop are not new genres for K-pop to borrow from, but their concentration in one summer cycle is notable. The common thread, per Lim, is restraint: less reliance on explosive drops, more attention to texture and atmosphere.

Whether this becomes a lasting shift or a single-season detour depends on how these tracks perform against K-pop's more traditional summer fare. But for now, the slowdown is real, and it's coming from too many directions at once to dismiss.