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Behind the Screens With PLAVE, K-Pop’s Biggest Completely Virtual Band Yet
PLAVE, the entirely virtual K-Pop band, on the members' identities, the group's plans for what comes next with live performances and more.
Alongside accomplishments by Blackpink’s Jisoo, NewJeans and BTS, stood PLAVE — a boy band whose members’ real-life identities are hidden behind digital avatars, but whose commercial performance and ambitions rival K-pop’s biggest human acts. Inside its scrappy yet cutting-edge production facility, and under CEO Lee “William” Sunggoo’s direction, the company imagined a virtual band in the style of manhwa, the Korean comics and webtoons that have become increasingly popular over the past two decades thanks in part to the otherworldly good looks of their characters. In a review of the latter, the Korea JoongAng Daily lauded onscreen feats like watching PLAVE “driving a burning motorcycle to the stage,” but noted that the band’s inability to actually meet its audience “greatly limits the range of performance,” while technical glitches jolted fans from the fantasy.
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