Denpa

Denpa is a Japanese pop style — the denpa song — that emerged from 1990s Tokyo otaku culture in Akihabara. Its hallmarks are deliberately unhinged: shrill, exaggeratedly cute or intentionally off-key female vocals, nonsensical or obsessively repetitive lyrics, and frantic backing tracks drawn from happy hardcore, bubblegum Eurodance, Eurobeat and anime song. The name, from 'radio wave', implies music beamed directly into the listener's head. Denpa flourished through visual novels, anime themes and the doujin scene, with *UNDER17* and *MOSAIC.WAV* — who named their variant 'Akiba-pop' — as its foundational acts and the production house *I've Sound* supplying many of its defining records.