Woodkid on the Death Stranding 2 Soundtrack and Why Games Could Be the New Music Videos

"Beyoncé is a good barometer, because she used to be the queen of videos.”

By Toussaint Egan | July 7, 2025 | 9:00am

Woodkid photo by Fred Gervais

Video Games Features Death Stranding 2

Woodkid on the Death Stranding 2 Soundtrack and Why Games Could Be the New Music Videos

Yoann Lemoine has undergone one of the most fascinating career transformations over the past decade and a half. Better known by his musical nom de plume “Woodkid,” the 42-year-old animator-turned-director-turned-singer-songwriter has carved an indelible niche for himself in the overlapping worlds of music videos, pop music, and mass entertainment. It’s no wonder, then, that Hideo Kojima tapped the multi-hyphenate artist to compose the soundtrack for his latest opus, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.

Endless Mode had the opportunity to speak with Lemoine about how he and Kojima’s collaboration first came about, his creative process in making beauty out of one’s faults, and whether or not video games are the natural successor to music videos.

[Ed. note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.]

Endless Mode: Tell me how you and Kojima first crossed paths. How did you get involved working on Death Stranding 2?

Woodkid: We met before the pandemic through a friend named Cécile Caminades. Cécile is kind of part of the team at [Kojima Productions] and she does public relations and marketing. She’s a very close partner of Hideo and she wanted us to meet. So we met before the pandemic, and I vibed very well with Hideo. I am familiar with his work and I’ve been a fan for years, so I wasn’t surprised there would be my connection with him, but he also connected with me. I shared some of my work, and there were a lot of fetishes—visual and sonic fetishes—that we had in common.

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I think that inspired him to use some of my songs in Death Stranding: Director’s Cut. He used two of my songs from S16, my second album, in the game. And then he called me back during the pandemic, asking me to come to Tokyo to work on the sequel, but this time to create music for the game, and of course I said yes instantly. I think I went to Tokyo when the borders were not open yet, because we were still in the middle of COVID, and Hideo was suffering a lot from isolation from that time, especially in Japan where everyone was extremely rigorous about it, and he lost most of his team to remote work.

I arrived at KJP and I started working with all the COVID social distancing, and that’s how it started. It all started during COVID and I didn’t really leave, I kept coming back to Japan to work on the game. It started with one song and ended up with like 15.

Endless Mode: You’ve had a wide and varied career over the last decade and a half, from working as a CGI artist to experience directing music videos, and now your work as a musician and songwriter. Given your background in games, did working on Death Stranding 2 feel like a full-circle moment for you, or was it something entirely new and exciting?

Woodkid: It’s a mix of both. My first job, when I started and I arrived in Paris, was working in a video game company. Though it was at the time of PlayStation One, I’m very much aware of the dynamic of these teams and the way we make games, though it has changed a lot since then. I still have a very strong appreciation for that work, and also because I have been working post production as a CG artist for years. So I’m familiar with 3D, I’m familiar with coding; I’m familiar with computer arts in general. So it felt logical, because I’d say my inspiration is fed a lot from video game culture because I grew up with video games and played video games a lot. So in that sense, it felt logical in a way.

My first record, The Golden Age–the first two videos, “Iron” and “Run Boy Run,” were inspired by 2D side scrollers [like Prince of Persia, Metroid, and Another World]. I’ve injected the video game culture in my work as much as I could, and even if I didn’t want to, it just kept on coming back for the past 15 years. I think my work has been very much influenced by that culture, so it makes sense. The games of Hideo Kojima, especially Metal Gear Solid, were fundamental in my discovery of this medium as more than just arcade and platform games, but as something cinematic. Games with storytelling and emotional dimension that I had never seen before. Final Fantasy has always been a massive inspiration for me: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X. The kind of golden age of Final Fantasies is something that I will always carry around as worlds that are very innovative, very strong in storytelling, and very immersive. And they still are probably the most important pieces of art that have inspired me in life musically, visually, and emotionally.

So all this is part of me. I still play about two or three hours a day, but at the same time, y’know; it’s Hideo Kojima and it’s Kojima Productions. So it is a very, very special endeavor. It is a very singular company; it’s not a company and it’s not a director that works like all the others.

Endless Mode: You gave a masterclass in 2021 where you spoke about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold. You’ve described your creative process as one of “repairing” elements and working under and with constraints to produce a desired outcome. How did that philosophy come to bear while working on the score for Death Stranding 2?

Woodkid: I don’t think it applied specifically to my work. I mean, it applies to my work in general. Just to explain: I’m a musical video director and a graphic designer. I do post-production, I do music. I know a little bit of all these crafts and all these kinds of ways of expressing myself. But I don’t consider myself an expert in any of these fields, just because I have to split my time between all these worlds. I think I’m pretty good at some things.

But y’know, I know musicians that are better musicians than me. I know CG artists that are better CG artists than me. I know animators that are better animators than me. I know singers that are better singers than me. So what I have to do is , I have to always play with my limits and kind of associate these things together, but also find ways around my flaws and my limits. That’s where I call my work a little bit of a “Kintsugi” approach. It’s that sometimes I have to fix things in a way that is not really conventional but still creates, hopefully, beauty in my work or creates its identity.

This concept probably fed into all my work with Hideo because y’know, I’m not John Williams. I’m not Hans Zimmer. I always kind of play around with things to make things work, and it’s not necessarily like an imposter syndrome, because I found my way through it and I know what I’m doing. It’s not like I’m lost and I try to hide stuff. It’s more like, really how my brain is wired is that I’m always making “mistakes” and making them beautiful. Making your own limits a beauty.

For example, and this is totally [an example of] kintsugi philosophy for me, I made a [CGI] trailer for the vinyl album that we just released. There was one shot that took a lot of time to render, and there was a mistake in it. At some point, there was a collision that didn’t look good on camera. Instead of changing things and losing time and redoing everything […] what I did is just, I found an aesthetic of blurring the image and making them shake, and I make them blur and shake exactly at that moment, so you don’t see the mistake. But then it became a creative statement.

I always react like this, like when I see something that’s wrong, instead breaking everything and starting from scratch and trying to make it perfect, I kind of Kintsugi it. I kind of polish and find a way around it so that I can sculpt things and move on and find happy accidents along the way.

Endless Mode: I know that you and Kojima share a love for fashion. You collaborated with Nicolas Ghesquière of Louis Vuitton on the outfits for your last album cycle, and Kojima tapped Errolson Hugh of Acronym to contribute designs for Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2. Did you and he ever talk about fashion, or any other shared interests, while working together?

Woodkid: Not so much, I know he’s interested in the idea of meeting Nicolas Ghesquière, and I know Nicolas has been playing Death Stranding because one of his faces at Louis Vuitton is Léa Seydoux, who is in the game. So I know there’s a possible connection there. But no, honestly, our work has been a lot about music and imagery and not so much about fashion yet.

Endless Mode: You’ve said before that your most recent album, S16, was inspired by many things both personal and political, including ecological disaster, societal upheaval, and the interrogation and eschewing of binaries. Death Stranding literally takes place in the wake of a cataclysm that blurs the boundary between the living and the dead. Did crafting the sound of Death Stranding 2 feel like a natural evolution from working on S16?

Woodkid: Yeah, I mean, there’s something industrial in the world of Death Stranding and something industrial in the world of S16. There are a lot of connections. I made S16 before Death Stranding was out, and we kind of made worlds that are very similar at the same time. I had worked on the ideology of the iconography of this kind of black liquid and the whale before, even on my first record, and it came back in [Death Stranding 2]. There’s so many fetishes that Hideo and I have in common. I also feel like it’s because I was fed by his work on Metal Gear. And I think yeah, it just makes sense. It felt like an evolution. I think Hideo wanted me to bring that world to Death Stranding. Y’know, not just folk songs, though there are some folk songs, but also bring that chemical-industrial, drum and bass kind of quality that there is in S16.

You know, every time I work with someone like this, and there’s not so many collaborators that are as genius as Hideo Kojima that I’ve worked with, which I feel very lucky to have done. But when you work with a mind like this, it just pushes you forward. So I feel like it’s what I’ve done on S16 but pushed ever further in terms of emotions and violence and politics than most. The only song from S16 that’s in the game is “Minus Sixty One” and it’s probably the most political song on the record. I think it makes sense. It’s a logical evolution.

Endless Mode: Was there anything while crafting the sound of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach that stuck out in your mind or surprised you?

Woodkid: I’ve always been interested in the idea of deconstruction to make music that’s ever surprising, and the fact that we’ve been working on music that has to be procedural, which means it’s always computed and recomputed by the engine, had me go towards music that would allow this, and had me deconstruct my music even more.

I remember when I worked with my co-producer, Tanguy Destable, on “Black Drift,” which is a song that happens during a big battle scene in the game. Hideo kept pushing me to make something even more deconstructed and crazy and industrial and radical and I went way further than I thought I would be able to do in my music and still recognize my music. So it was a bit of a revelation, like how far I could go into experimentation with my music without losing what I want to say. And I have to say I’m very happy about that song. I think it has that violence that I always look for in my music, because I feel like that collision between emotion and violence is what creates the most tension in my work and in the world of Death Stranding.

Endless Mode: Given your background as a music video director and the sheer amount of work you’ve put into the score of Death Stranding 2, I have to ask: Have you approached Kojima yet about directing any music videos tied to the game’s universe and characters?

Woodkid: Not really. Honestly, I have the best music video you can ever think of. I have a whole video game. How can you hope for a better modern, futuristic media to transport the music, y’know? So no, I think that music is made for that game, really. But y’know, we’re talking about doing a whole orchestra tour that’s gonna tour not just my music, but the whole music of the game, everywhere in the world. So it’s also like a way to promote music that’s not just music videos. And to be honest, I shouldn’t say that, because it’s where I grew up, and that’s what made me in parts, but I don’t quite believe in music videos anymore. I think it’s a medium that is a little bit dated, and we have to reinvent the way we visually sell music, and I’m not sure it is music videos. I have a feeling that the format is still lovely, and that if artists want to make music videos, they should, but they shouldn’t expect it to be what will sell their music.

It should be ego moments; It should be moments to create a story. It should be purely artistic, and maybe that’s for the best that they’re not commercial objects anymore, because maybe it will bring back a generation of music video directors that make things for art the way Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham were making videos at the time. You know you will get way better commercial return on investment making a digital campaign on Tiktok or something than making a music video. Music videos that used to make a million views a decade ago will make 10,000 views today. I don’t think it’s what sells the music, and I think they’re so expensive objects to create, and now we are in an era of cheapness, so I don’t think that’s where artists should focus. Beyoncé hasn’t released any video of her past two records, for example. She’s a good barometer, because she used to be the queen of videos.

Endless Mode: Speaking of the orchestra tour, are you involved in that at all? And if not, are you excited to attend the tour at some point and see the game’s music performed live?

Woodkid: I won’t be involved in everything, but my music might be and I will try to be. It’s logistic. We’re still figuring it out. I would love to attend, but honestly, if I can attend, I’d rather go on stage and sing. [laughs]

Endless Mode: As a musician, visual artist, and director yourself, what are some of the most important lessons you took from your time working with Kojima and the rest of Kojima Production that you want to incorporate into your work going forward?

Woodkid: I mean, there’s one thing that, to me, is the most striking, and it’s actually making kind of like a buzz now in the press. So I will say it again, because it’s so iconic and such a good lesson for every artist.

Halfway while we were doing the game, Hideo ran a couple of tests with players, I think, a panel of a couple hundred of players, I’m not sure, playing some sequences and a key moment of the gameplay. The results were really good. Like, everyone loved it. Everyone said it’s, it’s really good. It pissed off Hideo. It pissed him off. And he said, “I don’t want my game to be mainstream.” So it changed. He changed the script and the gameplay or something. I’m not quite sure what it was he changed, but he modified things to make a storyline or his game more polarizing. And he always says something which is, if you’re loved by everyone, you will be forgotten very quickly. It means your game is pre-digested. It means your piece of art that you’re making is understandable by everyone. So it’s not going to move everyone, because people want to hear and listen to the same thing over and over again because it’s easier for them. But if you are hated by half of the people, and then the rest kind of likes it, and just one or two people out of 10 are shocked by what they’re seeing and are transformed by it, then they will become artists and they will become inspired by what you’ve done. Then it will change their life.

I’ve always tried to, y’know, classic artist bullshit, but I’ve always tried to reconcile the kind of edginess of my music and it’s darkness with like, trying to get commercial success and not understanding why I wouldn’t get the press, why I wouldn’t get the radio, why I wouldn’t get the streams. But at the same time, I would not want to transform my music and make it commercial. So I always have this super classic artist struggle, and living that moment with Kojima, who has nothing to prove to anyone. He does what he does, he knows exactly what he does, and no one can tell him what to do, I think that’s a lesson. It is a lesson, and I feel like I really, really grew from that to be honest.

Endless Mode: If you lived in the world of Death Stranding, would you still be an artist and performer, or would you try your hand at being a Porter yourself?

Woodkid: The more I grow up as an artist, and the more I see where the world’s going, the more I feel concerned as a human who is an artist, but the more I also feel that being an artist might not be enough. And if I were to live in a world like Death Stranding, I would probably not be an artist and try to do my best to make the world better in a very pragmatic, physical way and not just on a theoretical level. Y’know, I have that luxury now, I can just be trying to create messages in my work and through the poetry that I make. But I’m not sure how long this will last, so I’d probably be a porter, or something like a fighter.

Endless Mode: Besides Death Stranding 2, are there any other games you’ve been playing and enjoying recently?

Woodkid: I just finished layer three of Animal Well, which is a very interesting game. It’s very complex, especially when you get past the first and the second layers. I’ve been playing Blue Prince, which was really cool. A lot of indie games, I think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is pretty spectacular, especially with the level of production that’s behind it, and I think it’s a lesson for the industry. I’ve been playing Balatro. I’m very, very, very good at Balatro, to be honest. I get very good scores. Oh my God, I sound very cocky when I say that, but actually, I’m not saying this in a Elon Musk or Trump kind of way. I really am good at it. I’m not having people play for me and do it instead of me. I have a very, very good strategy to get big scores out of it. [laughs]

Woodkid for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is available to stream on YouTube and Spotify. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is available on PlayStation 5.

Toussaint Egan is a culturally omnivorous writer and editor with over a decade of experience writing about games, animation, movies, and more. You can find him on Bluesky.