shinyan

Forget K-pop — it’s all about the cat-pop!

Recent years have seen K-pop skyrocket in popularity overseas, including Japan. One of the groups that have seen the most success in Japan is SHINee, a boy band formed in 2008 that has released songs in both Japanese and Korean. But now it looks like they’re making a move for true global domination by releasing a video where the five dancers have been replaced with…cats.

▼ And they’re called SHINyan!

The name, a pun combining the K-pop group’s name “SHINee” with the sound cats make in Japanese “nyan,” is almost as adorable as the felines’ impeccable dance moves. As for the music, we can’t help giggling with each perky meow that pops up.

If you’re wondering who the cute cats are that make up SHINyan, you can check out a few of their photos below. Of course, they’re all named for their human counterparts!

▼ Named after Minho, MINONyan is the largest member.

▼ TEAMINyan, named after Taemin, is the youngest…and an excellent dancer!

▼ Named after Jonghyun, JONGNyan is the main vocalist of the group.

▼  ONEWNyan gets his name from Onew and is the leader of SHINyan.

▼ KEYNyan is the brains of the group and named after Key.

▼ SHINyan all together, living it up!

The music was mixed specifically to attract the attention of real cats — according to the record label, they were able to get six cats (out of six) to “look around” in testing. In addition to the meows you can clearly hear in the song, samples of paper bags crinkling are included as well as high-pitched sounds out of human range that cats should be able to hear have been mixed in at at 180 bpm. They claim these sounds will put your cat in a good mood.

If you have a feline at home, be sure to try playing this song for your kitty and see how it responds! We should note that smartphone speakers may not be able to reproduce the high-pitched frequencies, so you may need to bust out a pair of quality speakers to see any results.

And in case you haven’t seen the original music video, you can check it out below. We have to say, in our opinion, it’s not quite as good as the feline version.

And if you don’t have any kitties at home, we suppose you could just plug yourself into your favorite VR headset and try riding a catbus instead. It may not be real, but at least you won’t have to worry about fur everywhere!

Sources: Facebook/SHINyan, YouTube/Universal Music Japan, PR Wire
Featured image: YouTube/Universal Music Japan