Ten-year-old Luna and 12-year-old Asha were among the first Eyekons – the noun for Katseye fans, à la Swifties and Beliebers – to arrive at Sydney’s Luna Park on Wednesday after their parents drove two hours from Wollongong.
While they hadn’t won tickets to the girl group’s first Australian appearance – a Q&A for fans at the park’s Big Top on Wednesday night – they came anyway, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourite artists.
“I love Katseye,” Luna says. “They inspire me, because I actually do singing lessons myself. They make me more confident to go on stage.”
Asha adds: “I can get very insecure and they make me feel more confident. I love them so much.”
Billed as a global girl group, Katseye is undeniably brash, abrasive and, on paper, poised for world domination. Created in partnership between the K-pop giant Hybe (the Korean conglomerate behind BTS) and the US record label Geffen, Katseye pairs American pop sensibilities with the hard-hitting choreography, branding and relentless perfectionism of K-pop. The band’s background is noticeably more diverse than the usual K-pop act: Filipino-American, Cuban-Venezuelan, Indian Tamil-Sri Lankan, Swedish-Chinese-Singaporean, Swiss-Ghanaian and South Korean.
Take their latest single, Pinky Up – a high-octane techno-pop ode to the haters that namedrops Socrates and samples the techno classic Meet Me at the Love Parade. Or Gnarly, the 2025 single that caught Luna, Asha and the globe by surprise – a pugnacious hyperpop track with nonsensical wordplay, matched with an equally overstimulating music video.
The effect is exhausting, exhilarating and divisive. While the New York Times praised Gnarly for “deconstructing” K-pop, one particularly scathing viral X post labelled the song “skibidi toilet music” – something not all Eyekons necessarily disagree with.
“Sometimes that’s what I want!” laughs Emily, a 25-year-old who has travelled with her friend Talitha from Brisbane to Sydney to attend the Q&A. “Gnarly came out during a period for me where things were just a bit difficult. Katseye brought the fun back into my life … Whenever life is too much, I just put on Katseye. I don’t have to think about what’s going on.”
Catharsis aside, it’s also fun to dance to. That’s how Luna and Ash whittle away the day, practising Katseye’s choreography with new friends even as the sun began to set and they started to give up hope of seeing them. “I didn’t think it would happen,” Luna says. “But I got to meet them! I cried! And we met Evie, and we’re friends now.”
No matter what you think of the music, Katseye are mega-famous. In August their turbo Lollapalooza set in Chicago broke daytime crowd records, attracting 85,000 people. Then they landed a Grammy nomination for best new artist. A viral Gap commercial that kicked off countless more brand deals. They played Coachella last month.
They’ve even weathered their first major controversy, after Katseye announced in February that one member, Manon Bannerman, would take a hiatus to “focus on her health and wellbeing”.
Before the Q&A, 12-year-old Maisie sums up how many Eyekons feel: “I love Pinky Up’s chaos-y vibe. But I don’t like the part where Manon’s not in it.”
With her mother hinting this is a sore topic, we don’t go deeper. But it’s all forgotten in a few minutes when the five active members of Katseye materialise a few hundred metres away from the now-hundred or so waiting Eyekons. It’s perfectly timed with the Sydney sunset shifting the harbour’s skies.
At first, the group’s remaining members – Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Yoonchae Jeung, Sophia Laforteza and Megan Skiendiel, all under 23 – strut forward slowly in sync, before reassessing the distance and jogging over.
“Lara just ran straight towards us!?” says Talitha, who is 29. “I was so overwhelmed and had no idea what to do, I was shaking.”
For the next 15 minutes, Katseye keep up the pace with a divide-and-conquer approach to hundreds of selfies, autographs, compliments and chats with the Eyekons – a steady split of gen Z girls, gays and theys in garish-chic Y2K fits, teens in school uniforms, and pre-teens with their parents.
It’s complete chaos of screams as Katseye run back and forth penned in a semi-circle of fencing. But there’s a method here that lets every Eyekon get their moment with every member. No matter where fans stand, they do not go without at least one star to fawn over in their immediate vicinity. (Have they drill-trained this? It’s not out of the realm of possibility.)
Overstimulation is Katseye’s MO and they’ve certainly succeeded even, even if it’s too overwhelming for some. “Let’s fangirl over here,” one mother says, whisking her crying daughter to a quieter spot to talk through their feelings.
As for the Q&A itself? With questions pre-approved and delivered on-stage by the journalist Tait McGregor rather than the fans, little of note is revealed unless you’re a true Eyekon – and in that case, you’ve already watched the clips.
