During a Threads scavenger hunt for fans, the group chatted with Billboard about performing “Pinky Up” for the first time during “electric” set.
KATSEYE can check off a big accomplishment from their bucket list: performing at Coachella.
The K-pop girl group — currently a five-piece (Daniela, Lara, Megan, Sophia and Yoonchae) while bandmate Manon is on a temporary hiatus — chatted with Billboard on Saturday at a Threads Coachella party the day after their first time playing the iconic music festival in Indio, Calif.
“It was electric,” Lara tells Billboard‘s Tetris Kelly of KATSEYE’s time on the Sahara Stage. “Our dreams came true last night. You know, every interview, if you’ve ever asked our biggest goal it was playing Coachella. We achieved that last night. so I think it’s so much gratitude.”
“It was bonkers,” she adds, as seen in video of KATSEYE’s full interview, seen above. “We went crazy.”
One of the headline-making moments of KATSEYE’s Coachella set: welcoming surprise guests HUNTR/X to their stage for a joint performance of the massive KPop Demon Hunters hit “Golden.”
Yoonchae was quick to tell Billboard what the experience was like from their perspective: “I was so happy to bring HUNTR/X to our Coachella stage. They were really, really nice. They were so sweet. When we started to sing ‘Golden,’ we saw a lot of the crowd was screaming — they were so excited. I was so happy about that.”
“It’s really beautiful to have a joint slay on the stage at Coachella,” Sophia chimes in.
Perhaps the biggest personal moment for KATSEYE at Coachella was the group’s live debut of “Pinky Up,” the brand-new hyper-pop single they dropped just before performing it on the big stage. (The song is their first release without Manon.)
“We absolutely love, love, love the song,” Daniela says. “To perform it for the very first time, debut it at Coachella, was fire. I looked back at the videos and I was like, ‘Guys, we ate that.’ Especially the dance break. The crowd went wild.”
Megan adds of the track, “I think it’s one of our favorites. It’s very hard-hitting, something that makes us feel confident. I think it’s probably pretty high up there.”
At Saturday’s Threads party, KATSEYE helped lead a fan-driven scavenger hunt that started with social clues for fans at and around the festival. KATSEYE kicked off the scavenger hunt with a cryptic clue on Threads that sent fans through a chain of K-pop creators.
According to Meta, mentions of KATSEYE on Threads increased by more than 300% following their performance at best new artist nomination at the Grammys, and there was a also a spike on the week of March 16 around the time the girl group performed at Lollapalooza South America.
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