It’s Sunday evening during weekend 1 of Coachella 2025, and K-pop hitmakers ENHYPEN finally get to take it all in: the desert heat, the performances from artists they admire, and the news that reportedly hundreds of thousands of people concurrently watched the YouTube live stream of their Saturday night set on the Sahara stage.
Sitting in a backstage press area, the seven ENHYPEN members — Jungwon, Heeseung, Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, Sunoo, and Ni-ki — are awed at the stat. Sunghoon claps. Jake grins, “Next time, come see us live.” Jay adds, “Absolutely, that’s right.”
“I want to say thank you for the huge amount of interest in us,” Sunghoon says to the fans who watched from around the world. “We worked really hard to prepare for Coachella, and it feels like the hard work has paid off because the result has been great.”
The Sahara stage is under a large overhang on the Coachella grounds in Indio, CA, making the space feel both massive and intimate as the crowd poured out into the surrounding field. It was the most mainstream general public U.S. stage yet for the group, which began performing together in 2020 after winning the competition show I-LAND. Over a tightly-run 45-minute set, ENHYPEN performed relentless choreography and live vocals, rarely stopping for the “ments” and visual interludes that traditional K-pop shows are known for. They made every second count.
“We practiced a lot while preparing for this performance, so physically there wasn’t much of a problem, but it was really windy so my mouth kept getting dry,” Sunoo says. “I made sure to drink lots of water here and there so I could focus on the live performance. I also had so much fun performing with our fans, so the time flew by so quickly. I was a bit sad that it ended so fast, but it was such a fun stage.”
The setlist featured new arrangements of some of the group’s most beloved songs, including an EDM rework of “Drunk-Dazed.” The group remembers looking out into the crowd and feeling the crowd’s energy during the song. “It was crazy,” says Jay. Adds Heeseung, “The people on the floor [standing] looked [like] they were having a great time … I had so much fun watching them. I felt like a DJ.”
“It makes you feel proud, right?” Sunghoon notes.
ENHYPEN spent months preparing for the Coachella stage and making it their own. “Coachella is such a huge stage so when we heard that we were going to perform here, we had a lot of different ideas,” Jungwon says. “As an artist, this is such an honorable stage, so we came here really wanting to create a moment that was ours.”
And the performance went through many changes during that preparation process, Heeseung says: “To be honest, a lot has changed because many things we envisioned were incorporated into the music compared to the beginning…especially in terms of the arrangement, song structure, and various other aspects, we made many requests to include what we wanted. It was a stage that reflected our own taste.”
Jungwon concludes, “Now that we’ve successfully finished our performance, we could feel that all the preparations we made paid off, and that made us really happy.”
Among the thousands who made the trek to see ENHYPEN were, of course, some familiar faces, including BLACKPINK's Lisa, who performed on the Sahara stage on Friday night. The White Lotus alum was seen in the crowd watching ENHYPEN on Saturday, and they also filmed TikToks together.
“It was an honor,” says Jungwon. Adds Jake, “It’s an honor because we all watched her performance the day before and she did so well. It was such an amazing performance, and being on the same stage as her it’s very honorable, but also a bit of pressure as a K-pop artist. But we were so happy that she was watching and big respect to Lisa.”
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It’s been five years since ENHYPEN debuted, and in that time the group has released five mini-albums and three full-lengths (including a Japanese album), become Prada ambassadors, and embarked on several world tours — their next round of live shows kicks off in August at New York’s UBS Arena.
“It feels like I-Land was only yesterday, and it doesn’t feel real that five years have flown by since then,” Ni-ki says. “I’m so thankful to ENGENE who have shown us endless love throughout these past five years, and you know, we’ll be seeing each other for a long, long time. We’ll work hard to make Coachella a turning point to create an amazing album to give back to you all. Fighting!”
Sunghoon adds that there’s “such a big difference” in how they performed at Coachella and their most recent tour, and how they started on their first tour. “It’s been three years, and we’ve been on three tours, this is our third tour, and through this time I feel like we’ve grown a lot – in terms of both how we think and outwardly, we’re aging too,” he says. “But that’s not definitely a bad thing, I think that we’re maturing and flowing well, we’re growing well.”
After the Coachella performance, the group announced their sixth mini-album titled DESIRE: UNLEASH, a quick follow-up to their recent single, “Loose,” which showcased a different vibe — more “chill” in Jake’s words — than ENHYPEN’s normally heightened sound and thematic concept. Don’t necessarily expect more of the same vibe on this next record, though Jake is careful not to share too many details.
“I feel like it’s way too early to say [more about the mini-album],” Jake says. “It’s going to be a really good album but I feel like I say that everything we come back, but we always come out with something new so this time it’s no different. You can expect something completely different, and I feel like our fans are going to love it.”
And speaking of fans, Sunoo has a message for all the new ones they picked up after their Coachella performances. “First of all, welcome,” he says. “We’ve been honestly working really hard for the past five years, we’ve also grown a lot through Coachella, and we’ve done many performances in the past, so when you become a fan, there’s lots for you to enjoy.”
So how are the ENHYPEN members feeling now, in a word or two, coming off the success of Coachella with so much to look forward to on the horizon?
Sunoo: Happy.
Jake: Exquisite.
Sunghoon: How do you say “I poured everything into it” in English?
Heeseung: I’m chilling.
Jungwon: [Excitedly] Fire! [He waves his hand as if to erase the word, maybe because he shouted “fire” in a crowded room.] Ah, sorry.
Heeseung to Jungwon: Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh.
Jungwon: [Second try] Hyped!
Ni-ki: Slayed.
Jay: Honored.
In-the-moment interpreting provided by ENHYPEN’s Jake and BELIFT LAB. Additional translation provided by Grace Yoo.
