Finneas O’Connell has “spent the last 12 months in BEEF land.” And fans can officially join him there — Season 2 is now streaming. 

Series creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin hand-picked O’Connell — a two-time Academy Award– and 11-time Grammy Award–winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer — to compose the score for the anthology show’s latest installment. “Finneas is the brilliant mind behind most of the music that has soundtracked my personal life over the last decade, so it’s an absolute honor to collaborate with him on the new season,” says Lee. 

O’Connell’s original music is featured in all eight new episodes of the critically acclaimed series. BEEF Season 2 stars Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny in an all-new “beef.” In Season 2, newly engaged Ashley (Spaeny) and Austin (Melton), both lower-level staff at a country club, become entangled in the unraveling marriage of their general manager, Joshua (Isaac), and his wife, Lindsay (Mulligan). Through favors and coercion, both couples vie for the approval of the elitist club's billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), who’s struggling to manage a scandal of her own involving her second husband, Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho).

Lee knew O’Connell would be the perfect BEEF collaborator after hearing the musician’s and Billie Eilish’s Oscar– and Grammy Award–winning song “What Was I Made For?” in the 2023 blockbuster Barbie. (The track is also featured in Episode 2 of BEEF this season.) “I’ve never cried so hard at the end of a movie,” says Lee. “I knew he would be the person that could hit the right nerve, especially in our finale.”

After reading only the first four scripts of the season, O’Connell composed “Vicious Thoughts,” a melodic piece on a piano that transfers into a violent synth. “The second I heard it, I got super teary,” says Lee. “I knew the exact scene that I wanted to set to it in the finale. It was almost like his music conjured the image of two people running towards each other in my head.” 

Before Lee started writing the season, he made a playlist so he could have it on in the background. “That’s how a lot of needle drops end up in the show,” he says. “Almost all the needle drops are written even into the outline because I want to know where I’m heading.” You can find the full BEEF Season 2 soundtrack below. 

Lee always intended for the songs of BEEF to coexist with O’Connell’s music. Early on, O’Connell was given all eight songs that play at the end of each episode, so his score could intentionally work with each of them. One example viewers will notice is the composition at the end of Episode 2. It is the first time viewers see the powerful chairwoman in Korea, and it ends on “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “We played this piece that bled into ‘Heads,’ and then that became the Korea motif and theme for those characters,” says O’Connell.

When composing the score, O’Connell also tapped into BEEF Season 2’s theme of “generations” and leaned into the “modern nostalgia of treating the 2010s like we have been treating the ’90s for five years,” he says. “An amusing thing for us was how, for the millennial couple, their 20–15 years ago was LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip at Coachella, which is Sonny’s point: That’s horrifying, because that feels like it was last year to everybody.”

In Episode 3, Josh and Lindsay talk about seeing Hot Chip open for LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl — a show Lee actually attended in his early years in Los Angeles. “That felt like we were tapping into something so specific that it could hopefully be universal to people,” says the showrunner.

Aside from featuring their music in the season, Hot Chip even performs in Episode 5 alongside Isaac at the luxurious ski chalet of wealthy country club member Troy (William Fichtner). The performance stemmed from discussions Lee and Isaac had about what kind of music Isaac’s character Josh would have been into in his earlier years, along with their similar music tastes. “We’re often sending each other LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip,” says Lee. 

As he was listening to the band’s song “Over and Over,” Lee thought it was the “perfect song for someone to break down to,” he says. “If you listen, it’s such a poppy, fun song, and I’ve danced to it at so many music festivals. But when you actually listen to the lyrics, especially within the context of what this millennial couple is going through, it’s pretty sad. That felt like a fun song for Oscar to perform with Hot Chip when he goes to Troy’s chalet.”

Discover those Hot Chip songs and all the music featured in BEEF Season 2 below:

Episode 1

Disclosure “You and Me (Flume Remix)”

Episode 2 

Jessie Ware “Wildest Moments”
Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers “Get Lucky”
Billie Eilish “What Was I Made For?”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Heads Will Roll”

Episode 3 

M83 “Midnight City”
Chappell Roan “Red Wine Supernova”
Hot Chip “And I Was a Boy from School”
Tame Impala “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” 
Zedd featuring Foxes “Clarity”
Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars “Uptown Funk”
Nero “Doomsday”

Episode 4 

Leona Lewis “Bleeding Love”
La Roux  “In for the Kill (Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey Remix)” 

Episode 5 

Rex Orange County “Loving Is Easy”
Saint Lucia “Love Somebody”
Hot Chip “Ready for the Floor”
Hot Chip “Over and Over” 
Father John Misty “Real Love Baby”

Episode 6

Fun featuring Janelle Monae “We Are Young”
The Rapture “It Takes Time to Be a Man” 

Episode 7

LCD Soundsystem “Oh Baby”
Future Islands “Seasons (Waiting on You)”

Episode 8

Low “Roar Nobody Loves Me Like You”
Phoenix “Love Like a Sunset, Part 1”
Phoenix “Love Like a Sunset, Part 2”

Tune in to hear O’Connell’s score and the season’s soundtrack in all eight episodes of BEEF Season 2, only on Netflix.

Watch the BEEF S2 Creator, Director, and Composer Break Down the Final Shot