As a member of third-generation K-pop boy group EXO, Doh Kyung-soo (aka D.O.) has been moving listeners with his rich, powerful vocals since 2012. In his solo work, which began with his 2021 post-military-enlistment EP <i>Empathy</i>, the versatile tenor gravitates towards acoustic pop and R&B ballads. For his first K-pop studio album, 2025’s <i>BLISS</i>, D.O. uses the genres to explore themes of rest, nostalgia, and love.
On the 10-track album’s breezy opener “Nobody Knows It,” the Korean idol and actor taps into the same lazy vibes as Maroon 5’s “Sunday Morning” (which D.O. previously covered) to encourage listeners, and perhaps himself, to take a break without shame. In the more joyous “5 minutes,” D.O. becomes more specific in his advice, suggesting listeners “feel comfortable in short moments of leisure.”
The 32-year-old artist gets nostalgic on “Do you remember?,” expressing a desire to return to childhood, when “dreaming was natural.” Lead single “SING ALONG!,” a tropical house-infused dance pop track on which D.O. has writing credit alongside friend and K-pop colleague Zico, suggests that music can be the path back to that youthful optimism. On “Draw my path,” D.O. makes an emotive assertion, more than a decade into his career, that he is the one to tell his story.
That story includes love songs. R&B track “Fit” gets seductive (“Be my goddess for the day/Pull over wherever you want”), while back-half album tracks “I’ll Be There,” “Where You Were,” “IN ANOTHER LIFE,” and “Love to Love U” stay sweet in their expression. “Among the countless things that have inevitably disappeared/My sincerity is clearer,” D.O. belts on the pop ballad “IN ANOTHER LIFE,” embracing a kind of truthfulness as he ages in the spotlight.
