The "first and only NYC-born K-pop band" EXP quietly came back onto the scene within the past month with their second single, "Nolja Let's Party," determined to make it a hashtag trending topic on social media. It is the second song recorded by the group of six within the past four months.

Earlier this year, K-pop fans sounded off about New York City-based K-pop (or, should we say, K-pop influenced) boy band with a resounding, "WHAT‽" The thesis project group, ambitiously developed by Columbia University graduate student Bora Kim, made their debut this past April with their single, "LUV/WRONG." The "EXPperiment development" seemed to pop onto K-pop fans' radar without warning and trickled out of sight pretty quickly. Likewise, despite initial controversy, Kim and her partners Karin Kuroda and Samantha Shao, continue to dive further into the oddities and personality of K-pop as it relates to Eastern and Western audiences with the project.

Opinions aside, the members of EXP - Hunter, Šime, Frankie, Koki, Tarion and David - genuinely have earned some interest. With over 6,000 followers on social media, creating a trending hashtag to promote their second studio effort seemed like it could have picked up a lot of interest.

On the band's YouTube channel, a video features the guys challenging their fans to create and submit a video of themselves dancing to "Nolja Let's Party," which seems easy enough. The difficult part, however, is getting enough people interested on a large scale.

A quick search for #NoljaLetsParty on Google led to just a handful of tweets, and most of those were from the EXP handle. Maybe it needs more time to catch on? With the campaign video uploaded on August 22, maybe not. Could it be that it was not pushed hard enough? Or, could it be that "real K-pop fans" snubbed the band before they had any momentum.

EXP, however, has not given up hope or their experiment. They are still preparing their first EP and anticipate sharing a documentary film in 2016.

Listen to "Nolja Let's Party" and sound off: Do you think EXP makes music worth listening to?

--

Ashley Griffin is a diverse writer, blogger and YouTube Personality. An accidental nomad, Ms. Griffin currently resides in Houston, Texas. Find "Multifacetedacg" on YouTube and shoot her a message on Twitter.