ATEEZ Returning to Australia in 2026

13 September 2025 | Music News | Written by Krista Lee

K-pop group ATEEZ have announced they will be returning to Australia in 2026 as part of their In Your Fantasy world tour. They are set to perform in Melbourne on 3 March and Sydney on 6 March.

Their last Australian shows were during The Expedition Tour in 2019, making this upcoming tour their first time back in Melbourne and Sydney in nearly seven years.

The new tour dates put Australia among other Asia Pacific stops including Taipei, Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Macau and Bangkok.

Ticket and venue details are yet to be confirmed.

Hannah Bahng - Anything But Abysmal

24 Apr 2025 | Opinion | Written by Krista Lee

“Pomegranate,” one of the first songs promoted from Hannah Bahng’s debut EP The Abysmal, didn’t grab me right away. It turned up on my Spotify playlist somehow and every time it played I caught myself looking up to find out what song had caught my ear.

From the outset, I think it was simply a matter of hearing a song that ticked many of the boxes of the kind of music I like. However the track lingered thanks to a combination of textured production, unhurried pacing and a vocal delivery that carried confidence with a youthful gravitas. I didn’t pay too much attention at first, but after glancing up on at least four or five separate occasions over the next few weeks, I knew I’d have to look deeper.

I’d stumbled across Hannah Bahng, a relatively new Australian indie artist who up until recently had been best and unfairly known for being the sister of Stray Kids leader, Bang Chan.

Hannah Bahng, “Pomegranate”: the fruit at the heart of Persephone’s story reframed through diaristic pop.
Still from the “Pomegranate” music video (Bahng Entertainment LLC / YouTube, 2024).

What struck me about “Pomegranate” though was its persistence. It surfaced on my playlists again and again, refusing to fade into the background. Each listen drew me in further, the subtle layering, the restraint, the way her voice carried a story in her lyrics. While many debut singles seem to fight for recognition, this one seemed content to hold its own. That quiet refusal to carve out a space just for the sake of being seen I think is what kept me listening.

Bahng’s first step into solo artistry however, had come earlier, with “Perfect Blues” in mid-2023, a song that seemed less about breaking into the industry and more about setting down something true to her.

Before she reached that point, Hannah had been chasing a dream that felt almost inevitable given her surroundings: becoming a K-pop idol. On The Zach Sang Show podcast, she recalled, “I worked my fucking arse off to pursue this,” though she admitted the path wasn’t working out. She grew up in a household where music was ever-present. Her mother encouraged piano, ballet and flute lessons, and by her teens she was auditioning for the dance and music departments at Newtown Performing Arts High School. Neither audition was successful. Reflecting later, she explained, “Maybe this path isn’t working out for me for a reason. Maybe there is another path I can pursue to do music.”

Hannah Bahng, “Perfect Blues”: “of whether I want to drown or swim,” the ocean as a metaphor for fear, discovery and self-definition.
Still from the “Perfect Blues” music video (Bahng Entertainment LLC / YouTube, 2023).

At the same time she was trying for Newtown, she was also pursuing the idol route. As she told Teen Vogue, she spent her early high school years taking extra dance and singing lessons and sending audition tapes to Korean agencies. The order of these attempts is hard to pin down, but together they paint a picture of determination that was relentless. That persistence nearly carried her into a joint HYBE x Geffen Records girl group. On the very day HYBE contacted her, her future manager also reached out after discovering her on TikTok. Hannah spoke to both, and after a four-hour call with the woman who would become her manager, she trusted her instincts and chose independence.

What is striking is how she frames this history. In recounting her journey she rarely referred to her brother, Bang Chan, and only acknowledged the connection when asked directly. “As you know…” was how she began, a phrase that carried acceptance rather than resistance. She seemed neither defensive nor frustrated, simply aware that the association would always precede her. What mattered was what she did with it.

Taken together, the rejections, near-misses and choices form a picture of an artist shaped as much by what didn’t work out as by what did. Hannah’s trajectory into singer-songwriting was not the default of someone shut out of an industry machine but the deliberate decision of someone learning to trust their instinct. The privilege here is not access but perspective. Hannah had grown up close enough to K-pop to understand both its power and its limits, and chose to apply that knowledge differently.

Rather than following someone else’s template for success, Bahng began building her own, choosing self-direction and the freedom and pitfalls that come with making music that felt entirely hers.

From the outset, Bahng set the terms of her own emergence. With “Perfect Blues” and its swirling ocean metaphors, she signalled an unhurried ascent. By July 2023 she had already launched her own label together with her manager, Bahng Entertainment, choosing full creative autonomy over traditional industry backing. She writes, produces, directs and even designs her merch. Everything flows from her vision rather than a playbook handed down.

That vision crystallised in The Abysmal EP, a seven-track distillation of myth and memory. “Pomegranate” drew on Hades and Persephone, “OLeander” on mythic drowning, “Vertigo” brought a tension that threatened to break under its own weight. These songs felt lifted from diary pages, both literal and lyrical.

Hannah Bahng, “Vertigo”: a piano composition born in a sudden rush, but lyrics shaped over months of struggle and self-reflection.
Still from the “Vertigo” music video (Bahng Entertainment LLC / YouTube, 2024).

Listening to Bahng, I’m reminded unexpectedly of another Melbourne artist, Wendy Rule. Their music is nothing alike. Rule’s work is openly pagan, steeped in ritual and enchantment while Bahng’s is diaristic and indie-leaning. Yet they appear to share an instinct for myth and interconnection. Rule has long turned to Greek mythology as a creative well. Bahng too threads those stories into her writing. Hades and Persephone in “Pomegranate,” Hero and Leander in “OLeander.” Both artists favour intimacy over spectacle. But while Rule spent many years creating and performing in Australia before expanding to the United States, Bahng seems intent on charting her own transnational route from the outset.

That instinct for self-definition also made me reconsider Hannah’s proximity to the K-pop world through her brother. Knowing that connection, I began paying closer attention not just to the songs but to the architecture around them: the way her rollouts looked familiar yet slightly askew, how strategies borrowed from idol culture were being reworked to suit her scale. The association sharpened the question, not whether she lives in his shadow, but how she uses the language of the K-pop world to pursue her own ambitions.

Anyone familiar with K-pop will recognise the industry’s fingerprints in Hannah’s approach. The curated merch, structured fan events, intimacy-driven promotion, even the naming of her fandom carried well known K-pop hallmarks.

Hannah Bahng’s fans are known as “Blues”. Unlike the typically grassroots naming of fanbases, Bahng announced “Blues” herself on social media in July 2024. The announcement came during a relaxed live stream where she wore a blue onesie and played with Berry, the family dog almost as recognisable as Hanna and her brother.

Those livestreams became one of her most important tools of connection. Their format would be familiar to K-pop fans: an artist in casual clothes, speaking directly to supporters, letting them into ordinary spaces. Hannah leaned into that familiarity, turning it into a way of making “Blues” feel part of her daily life. By the time she unveiled more structured promotions, the groundwork for intimacy had already been laid.

Yet Hannah doesn’t simply mimic. She adapts these structures to fit her own stage of growth and artistic sensibility. At meet-and-greets on The Abysmal Tour, fans brought handmade gifts and she lingered with them, joking about Garfield T-shirts and asking about their craft. Online, she ran streaming contests where “Blues” could win signed Polaroids or short video calls. Even fan-run communities, like Hannah Bahng México, echo the grassroots energy of K-pop fandom while extending her reach across continents. It is the same playbook of fandom names, tokens and structured access, but recalibrated for her own deliberate, human-sized approach.

Even her debut branding invited interpretation. The Abysmal EP, followed by The Abysmal Tour, struck me as self-deprecating at first glance, almost like a strategic shield to disarm critics before they could strike. Whether that impression was intentional or simply the kind of media fluency that comes from growing up near the K-pop spotlight, it gave the project a layer of self-awareness unusual in an artist so new.

Her venues remain modest. Howler, a 400-capacity Melbourne room, sold out quickly but her reach is already international. By early 2025 she had taken her debut across both the United States and Australia, a scope most indie peers do not achieve so soon. It is tempting to assume her family name opened doors, but just as plausible is that proximity to the industry gave her a different kind of ambition: a refusal to think small. Where many Australian acts might have stayed local, she looked outward, treating the U.S. not as an aspiration but as a natural first step.

This is where the complexity lies. Hannah Bahng is undeniably talented, yet her trajectory has been shaped by what might be called the privilege of perspective. Her origin story leans on grassroots authenticity, emerging from social media and self-made momentum, but the polish of her rollout suggests resources and awareness beyond the typical indie playbook. Growing up close enough to K-pop to see global reach as the baseline has set her apart. Where most new artists struggle just to build regional followings, Bahng stepped directly onto international stages.

None of this undermines her artistry. If anything, it provides the necessary context to appreciate it fully. Her perhaps ironic use of “abysmal” invites reflection on the pressures facing artists who launch under heightened visibility: how to define success, how to carry expectation, how to sidestep inherited comparisons.

“Pomegranate,” the song that first caught my attention, remains the clearest emblem of what sets her apart. It resists the performative intensity common in industry-born debuts, choosing instead emotional subtlety and introspective sincerity. It resonated because it didn’t chase validation, it simply held its own ground.

Hannah Bahng’s early career embodies quiet ambition in an environment built on spectacle. Watching her carve a careful, deliberate space feels like witnessing a small act of rebellion: proof that stepping outside traditional definitions of success, or even gently subverting them, can itself be a potent form of artistic self-definition. Her kind of stubborn fortitude — the refusal to abandon her instincts even when easier paths beckoned — is its own inspiration, not just for young people trying to find their footing but for anyone navigating spaces where comparison and expectation loom large.

Her debut isn’t abysmal. It’s nuanced, layered and assuredly strategic. Most of all, it’s a thoughtful first step into artistic autonomy. And it leaves me keen to see where she takes it next.

Where to Listen

Explore Hannah Bahng’s music on:

• hannahbahng.com

• Spotify

• Apple Music

• YouTube