Stray Kids land the No. 1 album in the country

Stray Kids now has the No. 1 album in the United States, the K-pop group's ninth chart-topping release and the ninth to debut in the top spot within just the last five years. The album's title track, "This & That," has also become the group's first single ever to crack the Billboard Hot 100's top 40.

Stray Kids is an eight-member K-pop boy band that has built one of the most consistent chart records in recent pop history, racking up No. 1 debuts at a pace that rivals veteran hitmakers like Taylor Swift, Drake and Jay-Z. Yet for all that chart dominance, the group has historically struggled to crack U.S. radio, a gap that has limited how many of its songs reach the Hot 100's upper reaches.

The new album's path to No. 1 shows why. It did not even register on Billboard's weekly ranking of the 50 most-streamed albums, trailing greatest-hits collections from Nickelback, Pitbull and OneRepublic in streams. Sales carried it instead: Stray Kids' famously devoted fanbase buys new releases the week they arrive, often picking up multiple physical and digital variant editions of the same title. "This & That" moved 357,000 copies in its first week, the best sales week of the group's career.

Before this week, Stray Kids' biggest U.S. hit was "Chk Chk Boom," which peaked at No. 49 a couple of years ago. The new single's climb into the top 40 marks a rare radio and streaming breakthrough for a group whose sales power has long outpaced its airplay.

The milestone lands as K-pop acts keep expanding their footprint in U.S. pop music, even as crossover radio hits remain harder to come by than crossover album sales.