Featured image: Antithese.
This week we are coming to you from Los Angeles where we will be spending some time with YURAPICO and catching next weekend’s US debut of You’ll Melt More! My first order of business in LA was delivering a shipment of t-shirts and other goods to YURAPICO as Homicidols has, once again, teamed up to design her US tour merch. This time it is an original design from Kerriepico.
Featured Image: REIRIE.
500 Weekenders published over the course of 500 consecutive weeks. If you do the math, it works out to just over nine-and-a-half years. That is nearly a decade of spending Friday nights digging through the dark, chaotic, endlessly weird and wonderful corners of the alternative, indie, and underground idol scene to deliver this synopsis each Saturday morning.
When The Weekender first started, groups were disbanding and re-emerging in new formations and under new names faster than we could keep track of, and most of the MVs were live performance clips and badly lit dance videos that looked and sounded like they were shot on a toaster.
Nothing has changed.
Every year around this time, we round up what we feel have been the best alternative, indie, and underground idol EP, singles, MV, and albums of the year so far. It’s usually an easy and enjoyable job, but something was very different this year.
2026 has been an utterly relentless avalanche of incredible releases that’s placed us in a state of perpetual sensory overload. The sheer volume of top-tier music dropped over the last six months has turned what used to be a pleasant afternoon’s task of casually identifying what’s “best” into a grueling weeks-long comparative analysis. Team Homicidols eventually landed on the below 30-plus items, but the number could have easily been higher. I’m certainly feeling guilty about excluding a number of works and idol units, but we had to draw the line somewhere or this post would never get finished.
This exercise has certainly made one thing crystal clear: the alternative and chika idol scenes are currently operating at a creative high-water mark.
Featured image: Ringwanderung.
Summer rolls on with a flurry of activity and overseas idol events, including:
pinponpanpon are back in the US and causing mayhem. Today they are in Chicago for Summersmash. They have also announced an unofficial Anime Expo after party in LA for July 3rd. That is shaping up to be quite the weekend as YURAPICO and You’ll Melt More will be performing at and around AX as well.
Featured Image: diig.
As we ease into summer, things are starting to move at a slower pace. We didn’t see a ton of new releases this week, but what was delivered was decidedly good. We did get some some huge news on the overseas live front (just below) as well as well as in the Oshifound Corner, so be sure to read all the way to the bottom.
First up:
