K/DA’s FIRESTARTER brings the League of Legends pop group back after six years

K/DA, the virtual pop group Riot Games built out of four League of Legends champions, is back with FIRESTARTER, a four-track EP and its first new music in six years. The comeback keeps the K-pop core that made the project work, with Miyeon and Soyeon of i-dle returning as Ahri and Akali, and hands the other two roles to new voices: Canadian singer Sophie Powers as Evelynn and English pop singer Mimi Webb as Kai’Sa.

The title track arrives with an animated video by Fortiche, the French studio behind Arcane, which also made the clip for “POP/STARS”, the song that introduced K/DA. Going back to the same studio is a bet on continuity, even as the look changes: Fortiche has said it wanted the return to feel more mature and more fashion-led, a step on from the characters fans have been drawing, cosplaying and playing as in-game skins since the group first appeared.

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The audience was waiting. According to the release announcement from Riot Games and Virgin Music Group, the “FIRESTARTER” video drew 9.2 million views worldwide in its first 24 hours, and on the official League of Legends YouTube channel it has since passed 36 million. On Last.fm, the EP has already logged more than 1.4 million plays from about 47,800 listeners.

The casting change is the biggest shift. Madison Beer and Jaira Burns sang Evelynn and Kai’Sa on the group’s earlier releases, and their replacements come from different corners of pop. Webb is an established chart act in the UK, where her debut EP Seven Shades of Heartbreak reached the top 10 of the albums chart and singles such as “House on Fire” and “Red Flags” followed. Powers works at the edge of pop-punk and hyperpop and had released two EPs of her own before joining. Keeping Miyeon and Soyeon gives the new lineup the familiar sound that long-time listeners will check for first.

“FIRESTARTER” is joined by “WATCH ME”, “NEVER GOING BACK” and “GIRLS”. The closing track features DJ Sona, another League of Legends champion recast as an electronic musician, who returns to the game’s music for the first time in more than a decade. The EP is short: the four songs run just over 13 minutes, and “GIRLS” is the briefest at a little over two.

K/DA’s model has always been unusual. Video games had used licensed songs and original scores for decades, but Riot built a pop act whose members are its own characters, then hired real singers to give them voices. That let the group reach listeners through several doors at once: gaming, K-pop, animation and online fandom. Riot puts the catalogue at more than 2.7 billion streams and 1.8 billion video views, and “POP/STARS” was certified platinum by the RIAA, making K/DA and i-dle the first K-pop girl groups to reach that mark.

The lead single came out on October 18 and the full EP followed on October 21, released digitally worldwide by Riot Games and Virgin Music Group, with physical editions planned for later. It is K/DA’s second EP after All Out, which arrived in November 2020.

Next comes the stage. K/DA is scheduled to perform at the Worlds 2026 Opening Ceremony at Barclays Center in New York on November 14, alongside True Damage, Riot’s virtual hip-hop group, which sings this year’s anthem “Know My Name”. It will be K/DA’s third appearance at a League of Legends World Championship, after its debut there in 2018 and a return in 2020.

Tags: K-pop, Firestarter, i-dle, K/DA, League of Legends, Mimi Webb

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