Drawing Number One Records has released the original motion picture soundtrack for MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE, featuring new music and original score by acclaimed composer Dan Romer (Lilo & Stitch, Luca, Beasts of the Southern Wild) and the original song “Beautiful Ruin,” a collaboration with singer-songwriter Kaia Kater.
MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE (SXSW 2024 Audience Award Winner) is a dark comedy drama that follows the journey of Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), a U.S. Army Afghanistan veteran who is at odds with her family thanks to the presence of Zoe (Natalie Morales), her dead best friend from the Army. Despite the persistence of her VA group counselor (Morgan Freeman), the tough love of her mother (Gloria Reuben) and the levity of an unexpected love interest (Utkarsh Ambudkar), Merit’s cozy-dysfunctional friendship with Zoe keeps the duo insulated from the world. That is until Merit’s estranged grandfather—holed up at the family’s ancestral lake house—begins to lose his way and is in need of the one thing he refuses… help. At its core, this is about a complicated friendship, a divided family and the complex ways in which we process grief. MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE was written/directed by U.S. Army Bronze Star veteran Kyle Hausmann-Stokes produced by Legion M Entertainment and Radiant Media Studios, and released by Briarcliff Entertainment (U.S.) and NBCUniversal (International).
Now available on all streaming platforms, the album includes 12 original score cues that capture the film’s poignant and emotionally resonant tone, along with the moving closing track “Beautiful Ruin.”
A special “Beautiful Ruin” video montage is also available to stream.
Composer Dan Romer on the score & song:
For My Dead Friend Zoe, our goal was to make the score feel as though it were heard through the lens of memory. The story is ultimately about Merit’s relationship with, and memories of, Zoe – so we wanted every piece of music to inhabit that same fragile, dreamlike space where memory and emotion blur together. We leaned into an ambient, floating sonic world, often avoiding strict rhythm so the music could drift between past and present. When rhythm did emerge, it was entirely sourced from the military’s aural landscape — the metallic clink of dog tags, the chop of helicopter blades, and the echo of artillery fire — all sampled, processed, and transformed into organic percussion. These sounds became the heartbeat of Zoe’s world without ever feeling literal. For the end-credits sequence, we knew we needed something truly special. When Kaia joined the project, we layered her voice over the existing score, weaving it seamlessly into the film’s memoryscape. Her vocals became an extension of the sonic language — both human and haunting — turning the music into a living echo of Zoe herself.
Kaia Kater on “Beautiful Ruin”
Working with Dan Romer on the song ‘Beautiful Ruin’ was an absolute joy. Through our conversations with writer/director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, we wanted to write a song that both acknowledges the intense grief of Merit’s PTSD, while also highlighting the beauty and lifeblood of her deep friendship with Zoe. Dan and I went back and forth on melodies and lyrics, eventually landing on a quietly hopeful tone: lately I’ve been thinking of starting a garden/watching it grow/breathing, letting you go.
TRACKLIST
1. Do Something Epic (1:02)
2. Better Than Alright (1:28)
3. Living in the Past (1:17)
4. An Interesting Place for Milk (1:11)
5. A Run to the Cemetery (1:00)
6. But Zoe Would Have (1:02)
7. Why Would You Ruin That? (1:53)
8. Steer Us Home (2:14)
9. Traitor (3:04)
10. You’ve Made a Mess (1:16)
11. After the Army (2:54)
12. Zoe Would Have (3:09)
13. Beautiful Ruin – Dan Romer & Kaia Kater (3:29)
