Recently, SHINee came out with their new song “Lucifer” which has taken the k pop world by storm. The video to the song has one of the most intense k pop dances to date, and is not for the faint of heart. It is not as easy as, say, Super Junior’s “Sorry Sorry,” but it is definitely more impressive.

A few things you can note about the song and video:

1. Their look this time is far more refined. No more are they selling themselves as a cute boy band. Now, they’re aiming for a more mature look, with more metallic colors to their wardrobe, as opposed to the rainbow outfits of before. Be warned, though: the rainbow outfits do sometimes come back for live performances!

2. The great thing about this song is that, in an industry so flooded with auto-tune, this song relies on SHINee’s singing talents instead. And, wow, does it ever work. They sing perfectly together, and don’t need post-processing to sound good. Compare this to 2NE1′s recent string of songs, and you’ll hear a big difference in use of auto-tune in k pop.

3. Watch a live performance of “Lucifer” and you’ll notice something odd: Minho isn’t doing any dancing. In fact, he’s just sitting in a chair during every performance. Now, this isn’t because he’s trying to look cool: he actually injured his leg on set for an episode of Dream Team. So no dancing until he’s fully healed.

Altogether, “Lucifer” is the hottest and most talked about song in k pop now. Look it up in YouTube and you’ll see that it almost instantly got 5,000,000 views and counting. The dance is so popular that even the practice version of the video, with members of SHINee just wearing sweats, has well over a million views as well. Kudos to them for doing so well!

Want to know more about “Lucifer” by SHINee? Check out our full video review of the song, including a how-to dance guide, over at our k pop blog.

Technorati Tags: asian pop, international music, k pop, korean pop