With 22 tracks, &TEAM’s second studio album, Yukiakari, is positively massive as a modern representative of the J-pop and K-pop industries, where full albums tend to tap out at 12 tracks. Such is the glorious burden of a group that straddles both the Japanese and Korean pop scenes, necessitating track releases in multiple languages. Composed of losers from 2020 competition show I-Land and winners of 2022 Japanese competition show &AUDITION - The Howling, &TEAM operates under HYBE’s Japanese label. All but one of the group’s nine members (K, Fuma, Nicholas, EJ, Yuma, Jo, Harua, Taki, and Maki) are Japanese, and the members mostly speak Japanese in their promotions. This J-pop focus is seen on Yukiakari, which has 15 original tracks that prioritize the group’s native Japanese language (while including some English and Korean), and seven Korean versions of some of those tracks. In both its OG and “Korean ver.” incarnations, title track “Yukiakari” is a pop-rock banger, its cascading guitar riffs and dynamic melodies propelling lyrics like “The undeniable love that was born from everything we’ve shared/Won’t be defeated by any cold/We’ll light up tomorrow/A flame full of hope” to airy heights. The song and album get their name from the Japanese word for “snow light” or “snow glow,” evoking a wintry coziness perfect for the December timing of the album’s release. Yukiakari is designed as an epic conclusion to &TEAM’s Four Seasons series, which included 2024’s spring single “Samidare,” summer single “Aoarashi,” and fall single “Jyuugoya.” All those tracks are on Yukiakari, raising the album to something more grandly nostalgic than the sum of its single parts.