Song Review:: RE:WIND: Treading Water

• Release date: 2026 October 09

• Album tracklist: Treading Water

• Album runtime: 3 minutes

 It's been a hot minute since they released something, so I'm kind of stoked about this. I love their debut song, if you weren't here for this back then or you ignored it. It's pretty awesome. It's one of the most Backstreet Boys things I've heard in recent years. And also, the eldest one loves BTOB, so we already know he's a man of taste for top-tier vocals, and I can say that objectively because of how the other five groups reacted to BTOB on Kingdom (one of my favorite responses was "If they decide to dance too, we're done") and because of what they've won with those vocals. So the fact that one of them loves BTOB tells us his vocal standard, and it will likely continue to influence the vocals of this group because of the emulation thing humans do that's so fun.

This feels like it might be leaning a little afrobeats, but I don't think that's the predominant genre here. It's just flavoring the instrumental a little in some spots. Otherwise, the instrumental is a very pleasant combination of beats with very low amounts of melody or melodic instruments and not a lot of variation. This instrumental is here to be supportive for the vocals and not be distracting, both of which it does very well. There is a spot where we get a full soften of the instrumental, and it lingered a lot longer than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise, but largely, the instrumental is most unremarkable. I do think that might be a good thing for this song though. Which is odd.

I really do like this group. This is a vocals heavy song and I think that once again, the majority of the song is in English. All three members get such a good display of their sounds and all three sound different enough that they're easily identifiable. I cannot tell you how nice it is to have a recent group with vocal colors that are so distinct. Not that a lot of the recent debuts don't have good singers. It's just that within groups, they all tend to sound the same and there's a specific sound that has been very popular across groups. So to have a group where you can identify all three members easily, even if you don't know exactly who they are (I'll raise my hand for that because I only know one of them by name and that's because he's my BTOB fan) is wildly refreshing. The rapping continues with that very soft stretch of instrumental, which is an interesting thing, but you know what's the coolest thing about this song? The ad-libs in one spot are actually lower than the main melody. We actually get harmonizing under melody. That practically never happens.

Also, this means they get to join L5ST as my "recent debut BTOB inheritors". This is just a visualizer for the music video, but it's still very summery and floaty and sweet.