Kroi’s new single ‘SPIN’ has passed one million streams on Spotify just two days after its September 24th release. The Tokyo five-piece wrote the track for the anime’s second and third stages, which began streaming weekly on September 25th.
Beyond Spotify, ‘SPIN’ has debuted at No. 50 on the Genius HOT TOP 100, the band’s first appearance on the chart, and has also reached No. 26 on YouTube Music’s trending chart in the US.
News of the tie-in broke on September 23rd, when a surprise video played during the encore of the band’s sold-out Kroi Live Tour 2026 JUNGLE finale at Zepp Haneda. Kroi followed it with the song’s first live performance, with fans permitted to film that one song, leading to clips doing the rounds on social media.
Leo Uchida wrote the lyrics, with composition and arrangement credited to Kroi as a band. In a statement shared by their label, the band said they went through plenty of trial and error working out how to turn the series’ race across North America into music.
“We’ve been creating songs with a sandy theme for several years now, and we thought we could put the sensibilities we’ve cultivated through that experience to good use this time as well. Centered around a sound reminiscent of Ennio Morricone and The Ventures that evokes Westerns, we finished this track by blending in various musical styles we’ve explored over the years, such as funk, soul, and hip-hop.”
Adapted from the seventh part of Hirohiko Araki’s manga, STEEL BALL RUN follows former jockey Johnny Joestar and outlaw Gyro Zeppeli through an 1890 horse race across North America. Its second stage sends the pair across roughly 750 miles of desert, familiar ground for a band who have spent years writing songs around sand.
Netflix premiered the anime in March with a single 47-minute episode covering the race’s first stage, and new episodes now stream every Friday across an 11-episode run. Kamikaze Douga, whose JoJo credits include the openings for the 2012 series and Stone Ocean, animated the new title sequence.
Yuki Chiba takes the ending with ‘Shinukaikiruka’, his first song written for an anime, released on September 25th. His track breaks from earlier JoJo seasons, which closed on licensed Western songs such as Yes’s ‘Roundabout’.
‘SPIN’ follows July’s ‘All in’, Kroi’s opening for the second cour of LIAR GAME, and adds to a run of anime themes that includes ‘Method’ for SAKAMOTO DAYS and ‘Water Carrier’ for SAND LAND: THE SERIES.
A CD single follows on October 28th in three editions, each with newly illustrated anime artwork on the cover. Blu-ray and DVD editions add a live session filmed at RAK Studios in London, plus Live Session “REFLECTIONS”, which includes ‘SPIN’.
Footage from London adds to Kroi’s growing UK ties, following their live debut at The Great Escape in Brighton in May 2025 and ‘Kinetic’, recorded in London with Incognito’s Bluey on the same trip.
Copies of the CD come with a presale lottery entry for Kroi Live Tour 2027, and retailer bonuses include a steel ball badge from Pony Canyon’s own stores. Kroi head out on that tour in June 2027, visiting 15 cities across Japan before closing at Zepp Sapporo on July 31st.
Kroi
SPIN
Release Date: 24/09/2026 (digital), 28/10/2026 (CD)
Label: IRORI Records / PONY CANYON
Stream: Links
CD: Regular | DVD Edition | Blu-ray Edition
Dates and tickets
| Date | Location | Tickets |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Jun 2027 | Zepp Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan | Not on sale |
| 7 Jun 2027 | DRUM Be-7, Nagasaki, Japan | Not on sale |
| 11 Jun 2027 | Zepp DiverCity (TOKYO), Tokyo, Japan | Not on sale |
| 18 Jun 2027 | Kanazawa REDSUN, Kanazawa, Japan | Not on sale |
| 20 Jun 2027 | Niigata LOTS, Niigata, Japan | Not on sale |
| 26 Jun 2027 | Zepp Nagoya, Nagoya, Japan | Not on sale |
| 3 Jul 2027 | CHICKEN GEORGE, Kobe, Japan | Not on sale |
| 4 Jul 2027 | Zepp Namba, Osaka, Japan | Not on sale |
| 10 Jul 2027 | Sendai GIGS, Sendai, Japan | Not on sale |
| 11 Jul 2027 | Morioka CLUB CHANGE WAVE, Morioka, Japan | Not on sale |
| 16 Jul 2027 | Hiroshima CLUB QUATTRO, Hiroshima, Japan | Not on sale |
| 17 Jul 2027 | CRAZYMAMA KINGDOM, Okayama, Japan | Not on sale |
| 19 Jul 2027 | Wstudio RED, Matsuyama, Japan | Not on sale |
| 22 Jul 2027 | KT Zepp Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan | Not on sale |
| 31 Jul 2027 | Zepp Sapporo, Sapporo, Japan | Not on sale |
About Kroi
Kroi are a Tokyo five-piece whose sound mixes R&B, funk, soul, rock, and hip-hop. Vocalist Leo Uchida and guitarist Yuki Hasebe started playing together at junior high school, and when their bassist left, Hasebe messaged Masanori Seki on Instagram to ask him to join. Seki brought in his university classmate Hidetomo Masuda on drums, and the four formed Kroi in February 2018. Keyboardist Daiki Chiba joined in December 2019, having mixed and mastered their EP earlier that year. Their name is a play on 'kuroi', the Japanese word for black, and carries a double meaning, as a tribute to the Black music they especially love and the idea that different genres, like colours, turn black when mixed together. Masuda first suggested it back when he and Seki were playing as a pair, and the band returned to it once the original four came together. Kroi made their major-label debut on IRORI Records with the album 'LENS' in June 2021. A sold-out Nippon Budokan show followed in January 2024, and two years later they played their first arena dates at Osaka-jo Hall and Tokyo's Yoyogi National Gymnasium. Their anime openings include 'Hyper' for UNDER NINJA, 'Method' for SAKAMOTO DAYS, 'All in' for LIAR GAME, and 'SPIN' for STEEL BALL RUN JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Overseas, they made their US debut at SXSW in 2024 and toured Asia for the first time in 2025. A UK debut at The Great Escape in Brighton that May led to 'Kinetic', a 2026 single recorded in London and produced by Incognito's Bluey.
