Dixon and Stein of Survive helped select older music and created new pieces to serve as character motifs, with working titles like 'Jupiter 8 Spirit Winds' and 'Lighting Candles and Eggy Pizza,' one of which evolved into the main theme.

After greenlighting Stranger Things, the Duffer brothers reached out to Survive in 2015; the band provided dozens of unreleased tracks and eventually left their day jobs to work on the show full-time.

The main theme’s origin traces back to an unfinished demo, highlighting an unconventional path to a defining franchise score.

Composers produced nearly 14 hours of music for the show over a year, and the main title theme went on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music in 2017.

The Duffer brothers, fans of the electronic band Survive after discovering their work in The Guest (2014), used Survive’s music to create a mock trailer for the Netflix series.

The main title theme originated from an old Michael Stein demo titled 'Prophecy' that the Duffers refined into stronger, bolder iterations.