HYBE’s first debut project of 2024, Pledis Entertainment rookies TWS break onto the K-pop scene with Sparkling Blue, a mini album declaring the sextet’s youthful, melodic intentions. The group refers to their musical genre as “boyhood pop,” and it’s explored in Sparkling Blue across five bubbly pop tracks that chronicle typical teenage experiences through an upbeat lens. In lead single “plot twist” (titled “첫 만남은 계획대로 되지 않아,” or “the first meeting didn’t go as planned,” for Korean listeners), young members Shinyu, Dohoon, Youngjae, Hanjin, Jihoon, and Kyungmin psych themselves up to meet a crush: “Feeling so good, the D-day I’ve been waiting for/Gotta wave my hand just like I practiced/Check my hairstyle and turn around.” The brief, bright-eyed bop’s pre-chorus countdown hook—“Three, two, one”—works particularly well for a group’s debut song. English-language track “unplugged boy” best exemplifies the meaning behind TWS’s name, which stands for “Twenty Four Seven With Us” (“Let’s play it loud tonight, yeah/I’m with you, when I’m not/We face it all together”), while groovy “first hooky” uses hooky harmonies to confess “Maybe I really wanna kick it with ya.” While “BFF” focuses on the friendship between the members (“If we synchronize, it’s so special/Our own victory”), playful pre-release single “Oh Mymy : 7s” offers up a first chapter to TWS’s story as a group: “The two of us become three, then four/Our name keeps getting bigger/Yeah, we choose our own speed/We don’t like cliché.”