BREVIN KIM: THE BLOOD-BROTHER ANARCHISTS BUILDING POP’S NEXT CHURCH

In 2019, two brothers from suburban Boston cracked open the internet’s sonic ceiling with nothing but a laptop and a shared wound. Brendan and Callin Paulhus, better known as Brevin Kim, a name forged from a portmanteau of their parents' names, didn’t just make songs. They detonated them. Their breakout EP cliff (2019) played like a controlled demolition of genre. One moment, you were bathed in pop gloss. Next, you were swallowed by distortion. Then came silence, then screaming, then the kind of melody that haunts. The chaos wasn’t accidental. “Not one sounds anything like the track before it… but that’s on purpose,” they told Ones to Watch. Reddit caught the fever early: “These guys’ sound is the future. Never heard anything like it.” At a time when hyperpop was morphing from SoundCloud curiosity into a full-fledged movement, Brevin Kim sat at the center. Their music didn’t shimmer. It bled. We had the chance to talk to Cal for this article, and one of the first things I asked them was how they protected their relationship, not only as band partners but also as brothers while running a creative partnership. Cal said:

“Bren and I always talk about this, and sometimes we forget how lucky we are to not only be brothers but also to share the same passion. We have an identical ear. It’s like 98%. Sometimes he’ll like some shit I don’t and vice versa, but it’s so rare. And that has made creating music together so easy because we almost operate with the same brain, it’s insane. If he likes something, I like something, and it goes both ways. So luckily, there aren’t a whole lot of disagreements on the creative side. We’re so lucky to have the same taste and vision… but we do our own things in our personal lives outside of music, and both have unique hobbies outside of music that we don’t necessarily share the same love for, so that kinda helps as well. It gives us a break from the music and one another once in a while, but that’s my brother and best friend, so I’m just so grateful that we grew up loving the same thing and being able to pursue a career in it together, cause I couldn’t do this alone.”

photo by onerpmstudios

By 2021, the duo had begun alchemizing heartbreak into high art. Their single “NAPLES” wasn’t just a track, it was an exorcism. Inspired by Cal’s breakup and his flight from Florida to L.A., the song arrived wrapped in red nail polish, blood-soaked visuals, and inflatable dolls that screamed: emotional vacancy. As The Line of Best Fit wrote, it marked a “chaotic rebirth”. That same year came “YOU.FO.”, a shapeshifter of a track that began as an acoustic whisper and exploded into a rhythm-heavy anthem. Layered with guitars, vocoder croons, and glitchy fury, it served as another refusal to be boxed in. Then, in early 2022, Brevin Kim unveiled “DYE”, the jagged, wounded lead single off what would become their PAIN MUSEUM era. It was not catharsis. It was combustion.

By mid-2022, they’d become a staple of alt-editorial playlists, Spotify darlings without the algorithmic polish. As of August 2025, their streaming stats sit at 38 million total plays on Spotify, with over 198,000 monthly listeners. Still underground. Still untouchable. Their fans don’t listen. They testify:

“This song is so fucking beautiful.”

“Had me choked up.”

“Brevin Kim saved my life.”

You don’t hear Brevin Kim. You feel them. Deep in the chest cavity, where pain becomes propulsion. They aren’t here to remake the past. They’re here to burn what’s left and build a new church out of the ashes. While their hyperpop peers veer toward parody or polish, Brevin Kim tightroped between vulnerability and violence. They refuse predictability. Refuse clean endings. Refuse to give you what you think you want. “We’ve been pioneering our own sound for like four years,” Cal told The Line of Best Fit. “Hoping to break into the mainstream with something that wasn’t palatable two years ago.”

photo by onerpmstudios

They don’t imitate. They inherit, then obliterate. What makes Brevin Kim impossible to pin down is what makes them vital. They’re brothers. Co-writers. Co-painters on the same brutal canvas. Cal bleeds lyrics. Bren builds the scaffolding. They scream and sing, tear down and rebuild, over and over. Their visuals are mythic: blow-up dolls as stand-ins for exes, LA as a hellscape of rebirth, red nails as personal warpaint. Every detail is part of the same thesis: love hurts, and we’re not okay. But in their refusal to be okay, they’ve become iconic.

As the post-hyperpop landscape searches for new gods, Brevin Kim isn’t just standing on the edge of the throne; they’re redesigning it. They’ve weathered the glitchcore trends, the Spotify-core mimicry, the saturation of sad-boy autotune. And they’ve emerged sharper. Louder. Stranger. Truer. And they’ve got the attention of Bones and TeamSESH as well, as by looking at the publishing lines on their most recent single “LEAD SINGER”, it seems the boys have struck a new deal with a new partner. In talking to Cal about the new partnership, he says:

“It’s kind of a complicated thing, but we’re now working with Elliott (Bones’ brother and manager) and distributing through Empire… but just to speak on Bones, Elliott, and SESH in general, they’ve changed our lives and our outlook on music. It’s been insane.”

The collaborative album DEMO, with the aforementioned Bones, seemed to be a taste of further things to come from BK and TeamSESH. The aesthetics and vibe seem to blend perfectly. They shot several music videos for the project that all had the feel of a big-budget music video. In talking about the experience of shooting those music videos, Cal said:

“It was inspiring .. biggest budget video we’ve ever done. Saw things we’ve never seen before on the production side, and our boy Grant absolutely killed. 60+ people there, between actors and crew. It just felt like a long time coming and the start of much more to come, but at the end of the day, it was just another day. Felt natural and warranted, and somehow me and Bren were the most confident we’ve ever been in front of a camera despite how many people were there. I don’t know why or how.”

We can’t be the only ones excited to see what comes of this new partnership. They’re currently in the rollout phase of their next project, BOY BAND, so be sure to tap in with the boys as they’re one of the best in the game when it comes to rolling out new material.

They are the band your favorite artist is listening to. They are the sound of what’s next: gritty, gut-wrenching, gloriously unmarketable until the market catches up. So remember the name. Tattoo it if you have to. Brevin Kim didn’t just survive the genre wars. They’re writing the next scripture, in blood.