If anyone had told me five years ago that I would be a K-pop stan, I would have snorted with derision and cited my decades of indie-rock cred.

I grew up on the Boston music scene of the early ‘80s, where I used my fake ID to see Gang of Four, Echo & The Bunnymen and many others. Later I moved to New York, where I worked my way up through the indie music scene and two different alternative music magazines, ending up as the editor-in-chief of CMJ New Music Report, a since-shuttered college music weekly that helped launch the careers of R.E.M., Nirvana, Soundgarden and countless others.

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So what could have led me to become obsessed with a genre based on some of the most shamelessly undistilled pop music in history, one that many people — including most of my onetime peers — dismiss as fluffy, formulaic and style-over-substance?

Stray Kids, that’s what.

Back in 2022, when “KPop Demon Hunters” was just a gleam in its creators’ eyes, a friend sent me a link to the “God’s Menu” video, telling me to let her know when I hit “that one part.”  I had no idea what she meant, but I clicked the link — and my life, or at least my lifestyle, was forever changed.

The song’s cacophony hit me first, an almost overwhelming barrage of noise. Then came Changbin’s muscular rap. But the payoff comes at the........

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