UNCUT GEM

The record

UNCUT GEM is KiiiKiii’s debut mini album, released on 24 March 2025 with six tracks. The title track is ‘I DO ME’.

The album introduction on Bugs, written by Starship Entertainment, presents the five members as uncut stones. The video for ‘I DO ME’ went up ahead of the record, on 16 February 2025.

Reviews

Jeong Gi-yeop of IZM opened his review of 31 March 2025 by calling the record “a new work in which the well-trodden and the new sit together”. What he wrote about at greatest length is the origin story the songs behind the title track tell. “‘ONE OFF’, a language given to them by the prose writer Lee Seul-ah, describes in concrete terms the nerves and the realisations of the trainee years and makes you listen to KiiiKiii’s story,” he wrote, adding that “handing the narrator’s role to people who have broken the mould in their own fields — the writer Lee Seul-ah, the poet Lee Hwon, the musician Jang Seok-hoon — also worked to bring out the group’s character”. He closed: “the members too handled what each was given with a poise beyond a rookie’s, and cleared their first test easily.”

Puah Ziwei of NME, reviewing the record on 26 March 2025, wrote that its choices are not easy ones for a new girl group to make: “‘Uncut Gem’ certainly isn’t a ‘safe’ project for any group to make their debut with in the current landscape — and that must be applauded.” The last line of the review reads: “KiiiKiii are bringing back a sense of fun and excitement to the world of K-pop.”

Idology (아이돌로지) put the title track on ‘The 20 Songs of the Year 2025’, published on 30 December 2025. Mimyo opened his entry with “a rookie girl group sets out on an adventure toward the world, and they are looking only at themselves”, and closed it: “watching this fearlessly lovable rookie’s journey, from a starting point of inherited context and a break between generations, may be a cruel thing — but it is a moving one, and one to look forward to.”

Billboard put the same song on its staff list of the 25 best K-pop songs of 2025, published on 18 December 2025. Amina Ayoud wrote that “it’s a hopeful and groovy track that’s softer than some of the other entries on this list”, and added: “listening along makes us feel like we’re strolling through a grassy clearing, crisp spring breeze whipping through our hair.”

Among the tracks

‘I DO ME’ is the song all four outlets took up. Mimyo wrote that “an arpeggiator pumping out rhythm like a motor is joined to a synthwave sort of wistful prettiness, and yet it never sounds desperate”, and read the song’s so-called broken Korean not as a device for catching the eye but as part of “simply being me”. Ayoud described it as a dreamy pop track whose vocals swell and build to a catchy but stripped-down chorus.

‘THERE THEY GO’ is the song Jeong called the album’s biggest surprise. “‘There they go’, where a minor touch comes from a writing team you could fairly call a gathering of K-pop specialists, gives the album’s greatest surprise with its unconventional structure,” he wrote, naming Ryan Jhun, Dem Jointz and Bekuh Boom among the credits, and added that “in a K-pop that frets over dividing the parts, the gamble of giving a fifth of the song to its outro succeeded”. Ziwei picked out the same track as “a similarly bass-driven R&B tune that makes great use of marching snare and the sound of the group’s heavy breathing to build an intriguing soundscape”.

Of ‘GROUNDWORK’, Ziwei described a whispered intro giving way to a dreamy, speak-sung verse over glitchy synths before the instrumental falls away for an overpowering chanted chorus, and wrote that “the individual elements of the song might be old hat, but they’re put together in a subversive way that makes it a great listen”. On ‘DEBUT SONG’ Jeong wrote that it “shares the same strength and, celebrating the debut outright, offered a distinctiveness that had not been there before”, while Ziwei wrote that the way it interpolates ‘Happy Birthday To You’ recalls the irreverent, experimental nature of old-school K-pop.

Around it

Four and a half months later, on 6 August 2025, the digital single DANCING ALONE followed, and To Me From Me in November.