Aespa is back from Kwangya

Logo teaser for aespa's 3rd mini album "My World" (SM Entertainment)

K-pop girl group aespa is back, making its long-awaited return with a new album 10 months after the release of its last album.

Aespa's new mini album, “My World,” will be out on May 8, according to an announcement by SM Entertainment on Monday.

This is the group's third mini album following its previous mini album “Girls” which was launched last July.

The new album comprises a total of six tracks in which aespa will continue to tell its story evolving around Kwangya, a shared SM cinematic universe for the K-pop powerhouse’s artists.

This part of the story will be about the girls returning to the “real world” after their journey in Kwangya as avatars in metaverse.

Aespa’s previous tracks “Black Mamba,” “Next Level,” “Girls” and “Don’t You Know I’m a Savage” laid out the journey of the K-pop group taking off to Kwangya to resolve the “synk-out” problem with its metaverse avatars “ae.”

Aespa's name is derived from a combination of "ae"-- avatar, experience and aspect.

Each of the four members of aespa has a correlating avatar in the virtual world created from their personal data.

Ahead of the album release, aespa will pre-release one of its sidetracks “Welcome To My World,” on May 2.

Eyes are on whether this new album will also make it to the Billboard 200, Billboard’s main album chart, as aespa’s previous album landed on the chart at No. 3.

Aespa continues to expand its reach across the continent as they are scheduled to take part in the American outdoor music festival Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival on Aug. 11 to 13 -- the first K-pop band to do so.

Aespa will also be the first K-pop band to perform at the Governors Ball Music Festival.

The group recently held their first world tour “Synk: Hyper Line” in which they showed off their live vocal and performance skills.

Offline and online preorders for the album began Monday.

By Hong Yoo(yoohong@heraldcorp.com)