Hollow - EP

Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2025

Stray Kids

In 2025, Stray Kids used their third Japanese mini album, Hollow, to sing and rap about the highs and lows of life as an active, successful K-pop group, exploring feelings of emptiness despite success and defiant pride in the face of criticism across five tracks. Stray Kids released Hollow in the middle of their global dominATE tour, eight years into their career. The context is vital for a self-produced album that gets emotional but never strays far from Stray Kids’ signature high-energy bravado or the buoyant urgency of the J-rock sensibility from which it occasionally borrows.

Title track “Hollow” is the most explicit in the album’s exploration of a deep loneliness, not easily shaken. “I embrace everything and run, but why do I feel hollow?/Loneliness haunts me no matter where I am, I’m alone,” Han sings in the chorus, shining some light on the realities of life as a hard-working K-pop idol. In the rat-tat-tat of “Parade,” Stray Kids keep marching, for themselves and their growing fandom, in spite of any criticism (“Who’s still whispering?/I don’t care, I’m walking even bigger and more confidently”).

The theme of persevering against hardship is made more tangible on the energetic fan song “Never Alone” (“Lightning is not scary/If we hold hands, we STAY, together, forever”). “just a little” slows things down in its request for one last moment with a lover, while “宿命” (“Fate”) finds electric-guitar-driven deliverance in the form of Stray Kids’ relationship with fandom STAY: “Even if I’m alone/I’m always by your side.”

Notably, Hollow marks the first time all tracks on a Japanese Stray Kids release are original Japanese releases, rather than songs translated from a previous Korean- or English-language version into Japanese. As is common, Stray Kids’ production team, 3RACHA (composed of members Bang Chan, Changbin, and Han), participated in the production of every track on Hollow.