Then there’s the title. “We constantly thought to ourselves that we would think of a cooler title,” recalls Applehans. “I think it ended up serving us well. It invites the question of: ‘What in the world do these two things have to do with each other?’”
Still, when Demon Hunters was released, Applehans was not prepared for “the intensity of the feedback, the speed and the specificity of it.” Scrolling on Instagram and TikTok in the first 48 hours, he saw Saja Boys thirst traps, but also “comments with 100,000 likes about identity and fame and generational trauma,” he recalls. “I remember just texting with Maggie: ‘Whoa. The people who have found this really, really love it.’”
The music credits for KPop Demon Hunters read like a who’s who of the K-pop world. There’s Black Label co-founder Teddy Park, who has produced and co-written for Blackpink, and producer Lindgren (BTS, behemoth girl group Twice). Songwriter Ejae, who provides the singing voice for Rumi and co-wrote five of the album’s seven original songs, spent more than a decade as a trainee for SM Entertainment before turning to songwriting. She, in turn, recruited fellow songwriter Andrew Choi, who was ultimately cast as the singing voice of Saja Boys leader Jinu. (Each member of Huntr/x and the Saja Boys is voiced by both an actor and a singer.)
