Make Believe Melodies For May 26, 2025

Dos Dos Monos

Dos Monos — Dos Moons

The turn Dos Monos took on last year’s Dos Atmos remains as imaginative and intimidating today as it did the day it came out. The rap trio embraced heavier rock textures bordering on the metal and made space for experimental saxophone blurts to craft a sonic battleship from which they could plow through the psyche and condition of modern day Japan. Time folded in on itself, references to dusty history facts and philosophical tenants colliding with NewJeans Ojisans and Pikotaro. It’s a dizzying assault on and reckoning with the world today, and pushed the trio into new sonic terrain matching the force of their lyrics.

Dos Moons is part follow up to Dos Atmos, but better embraced as the outfit — receiving vital touches from guests drummer Kazuya Oi and saxophonist Kei Matsumaru — building on what that full-length introduced. The musical propulsion and lyrical eye remain intact, but get built out further to show there’s so much more for the three to go with it.

Right away, we get a song meditating on Rita Hayworth, the Cold War, the act of creating while sitting in a Tully’s Coffee and about a dozen other topics sucked up into a twister of shouts and guitar chug (making some space to shout out Junji Ito drawing the cover art). “Gilda” is the most Dos Atmos cut here, catching listeners up on where Dos Monos were before “Pearl” offers a textural change. The guitar crush is replaced by rollicking xylophone samples and voices crashing over one another, leaving room for the group to connect the dots between Yasujiro Ozu and Hikakin with plenty to unpack in between. Unpacking the words is a labyrinth all its own, but sitting back and listening to the speed-round mic tag-teaming of “Lee Merlin” is a rush, as is the shifty closer “Oz,” featuring a segment tilting into nu-metal flexing before zipping off into a hundred other directions. Which, really, is a fitting summary of what makes Dos Moons both a standalone thrill and a reason to stay excited for what they get up to next. Get it here, or listen above.

bringlife, PICNIC YOU And Botsu a.k.a. NGS — 5 Star Cowboy

Dos Monos member Botsu a.k.a. NGS also pops up on this rodeo, featuring fellow rap-indebted outfits bringlife and PICNIC YOU. Next to the rock theatrics of Dos Moons, 5 Star Cowboy leans closer to traditional sample-based hip-hop, though if you switched it up to compare to modern Japanese rap, this is downright experimental chaos. Funky loops become inebriated pass-the-mic sessions on the title track, while “Post-Furo” stumbles ahead like it just ended a 30-minute-vaporwave-sauna-session. Gotta say though, it’s closer “World Peace” that really drives home the gleeful messiness on display here, with the five artists spitting over a sample of Enya’s “Only If” interrupted by a Rambo-worthy amount of gun shots. Listen above.

iri — Seek

iri has always been a versatile singer, able to work within sparse acoustic backdrops and livelier electronic compositions plus everything in between. The Seek EP not only reminds of this, but underlines how part of that adaptability is in her ability to keep the emotion consistent. There’s a melancholy at the heart of the four songs here, from the deceptively breezy groove of “Butterfly” hiding a meditation on aimless relationships, to the piano-guided minimalism of “river” and its wrestling with impermanence and the pursuit of art. It all comes to a boil on closer “otozure,” a dusky house-pop slink that’s part euphoria but also marked by a longing for something just out of reach. The consistent thread is iri, singing in a way to match the sonic mood while making sure the inner one comes across clearly too. Listen above.

Khaki — Hakko

Not all of Khaki’s Hakko careens towards chaos, but the second full-length from the band certainly sounds best when on the verge of slamming into a metaphorical wall. The group tightropes between rock raucousness and jazz-indebted time signatures, with individual songs here capable of pivoting from jogging guitar melodies to lounge-ready interludes to gnarlier waves of sound. Part of the charm is hearing Khaki keep it all balanced thanks to the member’s ability — live, especially, they are an absolute thrill —  though Hakko truly approaches something special when letting the vocals match the whirlwind nature of the music (opener “Hadaka, Michisugara”) or when turning these sonic tornadoes into slow burns (the nine-minute-plus “Bunmei Ji”). Listen above.

Sekai Denryoku — Okurimono Wo Sagashite

The philosophical edge and heavy concepts Siren For Charlotte’s releases bring are part of the label’s charm. Sometimes though it helps to turn off the part of your brain trying to dissect why a synthesized voice placed amongst a mess of guitars creates such an inner stir and just enjoy how it sounds. The strongest attribute of Sekai Denryoku’s Okurimono Wo Sagashite is the melodies themselves, recalling early Aughts Japanese rock with an emo streak, sometimes turning a bit fuzzier but always sounding built for a Chuo Line livehouse. Get it here, or listen above.

Michiru — A HUMAN TOUCH

About six months after offering her first signal from her bedroom, Michiru’s debut EP offers a closer look into the jittery pop universe she’s created from the comfort of home. Like Metoronori or Noah before her, Michiru’s sonic dimension finds familiar ear-worm melodies turned wobbly and wonky, with the skitter of opener “casual” interrupted by sound like a radio station being hijacked and the rush of “idiot” taking on a fever dream element thanks to the ambient glow surrounding its dash. In the middle is Michiru herself, offering vulnerable words that still sound sweet even in the head-trip around her. Listen above.

Amunoa — Linear, Bezier

“Before I realized it, five years had past!! Scary!!” Electronic artist Amunoa expressed this highly relateable realization to accompany the release of Linear, Bezier, their first album since the still energy-packed CRYPTID from 2020. That is a long gap, but the producer hasn’t lost a step on this new set, creating delicate club mantras (the far-off-voices adding an accent of the spiritual to “Moss and Memory”) to the jittery euphoria that I most associate with them from early on in their career (the start-stop glow of “easy ease”). It’s a well-rounded look at Amunoa’s approach to song both sparse and sparkling, showing that a wait can be well worth it. Listen above.

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Oricon Trail For The Week Of May 12, 2025 To May 18, 2025

Back in the day, the Oricon Music Charts were the go-to path to music stardom in Japan. Acts of all sorts traversed these lands, trying to sell as many CDs as possible in order to land a good ranking on a chart choosing to only count physical sales, even as the Internet came to be and the number of versions offered for sale got ridiculous. Today, with the country finally in on digital, these roads are more barren and only looked at by the most fanatic of supporters needing something to celebrate. Yet every week, a new song sells enough plastic to take the top spot. So let’s take a trip down…the Oricon Trail.

FRUITS ZIPPER — “Kawaii Te Magic” (227,213 Copies Sold)

The neo-idol renaissance has been well underway for a while now, but FRUITS ZIPPER’s first Oricon-topping single provides a convenient trophy to point towards as proof of this happening. As I mentioned last week, arguably the only worthwhile service Oricon offers in 2025 is something akin to a fandom chart, so FRUITS ZIPPER being able to underline its success with a strong-selling single does underline everything playing out right now. The outfit is the face of this new kawaii-first movement, and this can be the evidence they point to.

Not sure what else I can add to this one, as it has actually been available online for a bit now and I think I already yapped about the Yasutaka Nakata production (a kind of mutation on what he was doing around the time of PLASMA, with the most interesting being his approach to like, utilizing seven voices all at once). I guess the other interesting bit actually doesn’t involve FRUITS ZIPPER, but a different idol group. The runner-up this week is XG with “MILLION PLACES.” I’ll hold back on my usual eye-rolling at the group¹ to acknowledge they are obviously very popular in Japan having just performed in Tokyo Dome. Yet it’s interesting to see that the project’s popularity doesn’t translate to physical sales, as “MILLION PLACES” lags far behind “Kawaii Te Magic.” It’s not like they aren’t trying — the single features all the accompanying boondoggles pop groups have mastered, but at least now it’s not translating to eye-popping idol sales.

But hey, it’s 2025, a Japanese group can be huge thanks to the internet and streaming² with physical sales only being part of a larger success. I figured Oricon’s combined ranking would show XG closing the gap a bit…but actually no, it’s worse for them. They finish third because Japan is going gaga for HANA, whose debut single is quickly becoming one of the year’s breakouts. I don’t know what it really says except that this corner of pop is really getting crowded domestically.

News And Views

• MUSIC AWARDS JAPAN happened! I was there, I wrote about it while coming home on the Shinkansen, I still think it was pretty great even though I’m biased beyond belief. Read that report below.
  

• Somehow, I ended up at another awards ceremony days after my Kyoto jaunt. I covered the Crunchyroll Anime Awards over the weekend, and you can expect a deeper dive into it at The Japan Times later this week. Music wise, Creepy Nuts won the biggest prize in this space for…not the one you think! They captured it for “Otonoke,” which was a nice change of pace (and arguably the more “anime” of the two songs…I mean they literally say “dan da dan” to open it, whereas you could hear “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” and have zero idea it was tied to an anime).

• Want to know the clearest way you can tell idol music is back? A renewed focus on the “dating ban” within it.
  

• Grammy.com has a great interview with Kenshi Yonezu!
  

• I don’t know what the context here is, but at her Sydney show this weekend, I guess Ado didn’t know what a wombat was?
  

• Ultimately it’s a good thing I didn’t go as I had the Anime Awards to cover…but the Nijisanji-Hololive baseball game up in Sapporo looked like a blast, and featured mogra DJs!?!? They found a way to make Es Con Field even better!
  

• INI prepping a dome tour.
  

• What the hell is going on in this King & Prince video? What is Goofy wearing???
  

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2025 Spotify Playlist here!

1. Except down here to say “MILLION PLACES” is a super snoozer that even it seems to admit is pure fan service. Most of it finds XG just listing cities? I give it credit for at least nodding to the realities of modern pop stardom with a line about “making TikToks.” Still, pretty weak and I mean…maybe that’s why it’s in second place?

2. Though, weirdly, this is especially true of all the KAWAII LAB outfits too…this Oricon number one actually seems pretty late given how viral the acts in this space have been.