Caroline Polachek, Danny L Harle, and Hideo Kojima have joined forces for Death Stranding 2.
In a collaboration that feels like it slipped through a rift in spacetime, avant-pop visionary Caroline Polachek and producer Danny L Harle have joined creative forces with legendary game designer Hideo Kojima on a new single tied to Death Stranding 2. The song, titled “Beach Music,” not only marks a striking musical return for Polachek and Harle but also bridges the world of experimental pop with the mythic, post-apocalyptic universe Kojima has crafted.
In an interview with Kinda Funny Games, Polachek described herself as “not a gamer,” admitting that she’s never actually played through a video game. Still, Kojima’s enigmatic digital presence pulled her in. “I’ve been following Kojima on Twitter despite not having actually played through any of his games myself, so it was a huge deal to me when he posted my track Sunset on his IG,” she said. “It was also crazy because in my mind, the kind of music Kojima would like would be much darker, much more electronic.”
What began as social media admiration turned into an unlikely collaboration. Kojima started frequently posting her music, and eventually, Polachek decided to take a shot. Although her direct messages initially went unanswered, her team reached out through official channels and before she knew it, she was on Zoom with Kojima and his team in Japan.
The song itself has a long backstory. “Beach Music” was originally composed in December 2017 during a snowstorm in Brooklyn, one of the first tracks Polachek and Harle created together. The pair nearly pulled an all-nighter working from a friend’s apartment. Though she loved the track’s intensity, Polachek felt it was too “industrial and fraught” for Pang, the album she was working on at the time. “It was too intense and scary for then,” she recalled, “but I knew I had to save it for a special occasion.”
That occasion arrived when Kojima invited her to contribute to Death Stranding 2. The track initially existed only as an instrumental and melodic sketch. When she sent it to Kojima, he replied – not just with feedback, but with the full 60-page synopsis of Death Stranding 2, asking her to absorb its ideas and “incorporate as many strands of this as you can, but in a way that people wouldn’t be able to read immediately: something only those who’ve played the game would understand.”
Kojima’s conceptual fingerprints are all over the final product, earning him a co-writing credit. The development process became a cross-continental collaboration, with Polachek sending demos and sketches and Kojima responding within seconds – despite his famously busy schedule.
To anchor the song in the game’s world, Polachek dove into research, watching multiple Death Stranding playthroughs. A self-described “sucker for symbols and symbolism,” she was especially drawn to the mythological roots Kojima shared with her. One of the conceptual pillars of the series, Kojima explained, comes from Japan’s version of the River Styx: the Sanzu River. In this myth, the dead approach the river that separates the living from the afterlife. Sometimes a loved one meets you at the bank and turns you back; sometimes, no one is there, and you cross. “I was so moved by that,” Polachek said, “that a game this contemporary and futuristic even has its roots in something so ancient.”
Despite Polachek considering herself a slow writer, she credits Kojima for jumpstarting her creative momentum. “He really handed me the content,” she said. “When I have a starting point like that, it gets my wheels turning really fast.”
The result is a track that feels suspended between timelines: a song first conceived during a Brooklyn snowstorm in 2017, now recontextualized within a sci-fi epic set in a fragmented future.
The single is available now on streaming platforms, including Spotify, as part of the Death Stranding 2 soundtrack.