Ridley Scott's 'The Dog Stars' Soundtrack Arrives: Hozier, Van Morrison, Dean Martin and More
The soundtrack album for Ridley Scott's pandemic survival drama The Dog Stars arrives digitally on 28 August 2026 via Hollywood Records, a 17-track release that pairs Harry Gregson-Williams' orchestral score with a carefully chosen set of song placements. The album covers music from across decades, from 1950s crooning to contemporary folk.
The Dog Stars, a 20th Century Studios production, stars Jacob Elordi as Hig, a mechanic-turned-pilot who searches for fellow survivors of a deadly flu pandemic and blood virus after sheltering in an abandoned airship with his gruff companion Bangley, played by Josh Brolin. Margaret Qualley plays Cima, a survivor Hig encounters on his journey. The script comes from Mark L. Smith, adapted from Peter Heller's 2012 novel. Deadline broke down the full track listing on 28 August.
The film opens with Hozier's "Like Real People Do" and returns to the same song at its close, bookending the story. The choice gives the soundtrack its emotional spine — a contemporary folk ballad framing a tale about what survives after civilisation collapses.
Between those two placements, the music ranges widely. Hig plays Caamp's "By and By" for Cima through a pair of headphones after she tells him she misses music and dancing in the post-pandemic world. It is a small, intimate scene, and the song carries it. Deadline notes the moment as one of the film's musical centrepoints.
Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey," which Morrison wrote and performed, appears alongside Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" — two songs that pull from very different corners of the 20th-century songbook. Mick Jagger turns up on "The Long Black Veil," performed with The Chieftains, while Jack Nitzsche's arrangement of "Charmaine" adds another layer of vintage texture. Deadline lists all of these as featured needle drops — industry shorthand for a pre-existing song placed into a scene rather than written for the film.
The soundtrack also includes an original song, "Heroes," written by Jess Cates, Ty Kelly Lacy and Dennis Joseph Matkosky. And in a casting-as-music moment, Allison Janney sings "Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)," the Bart Howard standard, herself on screen. NME and Film Music Reporter confirmed the album's track count, label and digital release date.
Gregson-Williams composed the score, his latest collaboration with Scott after Kingdom of Heaven, The Martian, The Last Duel, House of Gucci and Gladiator. The composer has been a regular presence in Scott's editing room for two decades, and his Dog Stars score fills the spaces between the song choices on the album. NME noted the full list of prior Scott-Gregson-Williams credits.
For a film about a world stripped to its essentials, the soundtrack does the opposite — it fills the frame with sound from across genres and generations. Hozier and Caamp bring modern folk intimacy; Morrison, Martin and Jagger carry the weight of the classic-pop canon. Gregson-Williams ties it together. The album is available now on all digital platforms.
