21 K-Pop Groups to Know (and Love)

6. Exo

Read this boy band’s name as “X-O”, as in “hugs and kisses”. They have played off of this with their album names, including XOXO as well as their third album, Ex’act. Exo started in 2011 for SM Entertainment with a whopping 12 members.

However, as of late, one-fourth of the band has, well, left the band. The remaining nine members have continued, however, with Ex’act dropping this past June.

Notably, Exo also releases Korean and Chinese versions of each album, EP, and single. For example, you can see that Ex’act on iTunes contains the entire Korean and Chinese albums as one package deal. Earlier in the group’s life, you could differentiate by looking for Exo-K or -M, denoting Korean and Mandarin respectively. However, SM now appears to simply mark Chinese versions of the group’s music videos as such, like this version of “Lotto“. (The subgroups still have separate pages on the label’s website.)

For more from Exo, give these tracks a try: “Dancing King“, featuring the group working with comedian Yoo Jae-suk; “Lightsaber“, which actually is a collaboration with Star Wars for The Force Awakens; and “Lucky One” or “Monster“, also from Ex’act. “Lightsaber”, “Lucky One”, and “Monster” all have Chinese versions as well.