It’s time for the second installment of our music-focused… ✨Dev Storytime✨ …where we meet the composers behind Don’t Stop, Girlypop!’s soundtrack!!! In the second interview, we’re meeting with the dazzling duo Sarah Wolfe and Xavier Dunn ❤
Before we get into the interview though, I should probably give a brief intro on how I first met Sarah! I first met Sarah at SXSW and I even have archival footage of it! It was during the opening party for SXSW, which was themed around a game called Mystiques: Haunted Antiques. Sarah was DJing for the event and playing songs she’d made for the game’s soundtrack. I loved it so much!!!
Later down the line, it turned out the first composer we worked with on the Don’t Stop, Girlypop! soundtrack, Candice, wasn’t able to continue because of a personal project album she was working on, so then I remembered that Sarah had made this beautiful heavy dance pop track for Mystiques: Haunted Antiques where she just kept yelling the word “mystiques” in the chorus. It was a dance club pop type of song, which is exactly what I wanted for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! I reached out to Sarah on Instagram in around January 2025 and asked if she’d be available to compose some tracks for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! and the rest is history!
Xavier Dunn & Sarah Wolfe.
When did you both first know that you wanted to pursue a career in music?
Sarah: My mom was a visual artist and she was always doing lots of print making and life drawing, so I grew up in a really creative house. I started learning piano and guitar around about the age of 7 or 8, and singing lessons from 12. After school I was tossing up between graphic design and music and ended up studying music, and now I work full time as a digital content creator and a musician so I got the best of both worlds!
Xavier: My mom and dad are both music teachers so growing up in a house of music was normal for me and my 4 brothers. I knew I wasn't bad at music so I decided to pursue that!
Did you study music at university or college? Or are you self-taught?
Sarah: I studied music at the Australian Institute of Music and stayed there for about one and a half years, but dropped out because I was offered a job in music journalism. I decided to leave because I felt like a degree in Singing wouldn’t help me from a career perspective and, like a lot of young people, I had a bit of a quarter life crisis about how I would survive and make money! I started doing music journalism instead, alongside content creation for music websites.
Xavier: I studied a Bachelor of Performance at the School of Music at ANU in Double Bass and through that I was composing music for string quartets and orchestras. After Uni, I taught myself how to produce via Youtube so I could record more than just my string arrangements!
If it’s not too much trouble, please could you describe what your careers have been like so far.
Sarah: In a nutshell, it’s been a Hannah Montana type of situation, only a lot less glamorous! I had the work stuff, doing music journalism and I was also working for indie music labels in Australia, because I wanted to learn as much about the industry as possible. Then I also started putting out my own music during the time that I was working for indie music labels. Working in music and making music became a bit much after a while, so I decided to shift into my other great love alongside making music, which is video games, so then I started my career in the games industry!
I started out working for League of Geeks as a digital content creator in 2023, doing community management and content creation for a space management sim called Jumplight Odyssey and another game called Solium Infernum, which is a strategy game set in Hell where you and all of your friends are demons. That was really the catalyst that made me want to combine my love for gaming with my love for making music. I was editing the trailer for the release of Solium Infernum and we wanted to try something different that would make it stand out, so I volunteered to write a song for the trailer called Eternal Nights. When I was writing the track, I got even more immersed in the lore of the game, and crafting the track and lyrics for something so unlike what I had done before was an incredible experience! That was really the beginning of my career as a composer in the games industry.
I would also like to give a huge shout out to Michael Allen, the incredible composer behind the soundtracks for both Jumplight Odyssey and Solium Infernum!
Xavier: I couch surfed for most of my 20’s with friends as I became a better producer and songwriter. I then met Jack River and we became friends as I co-wrote and produced her first album, which won an ARIA for best Album and was nominated for best Engineer! I have since been awarded 2 Platinum and 10 Gold Records from tracks I have written and produced for artists all around the world.
What challenges do you face as musicians?
Sarah: For me personally, I have a chronic disability called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and had to have brain surgery in 2023 for a connected (pun-intended) condition, so being a disabled musician is a unique situation that definitely comes with its own challenges. That, combined with having a full-time job, often means my biggest challenge is finding time, keeping my energy up, and paying doctors bills! I wouldn't trade it for the world though, I'm grateful for the way my experiences have been able to shape me and my music.
Xavier: Learning to prioritise what you will put your time and energy into and learning how to say no to opportunities that may seem good but would burn you out.
What would you say has been your greatest achievement as musicians to date? What are you most proud of?
Sarah: That’s a good question! I guess there are the achievements on paper and then there are the ones that are more personal. The personal one for me was the first time someone made fan art for me. You have no idea how touched I was that someone would spend so much of their spare time on creating something just for me.
I recently got to feature on a track by the incredible 3% called ‘Running Through My Head’, which we played at the Sydney Opera House recently for Vivid in Sydney! I also got to perform Eternal Nights for the SXSW Sydney games opening night event and the SXSW Sydney Game Awards, which was extremely cool! And of COURSE getting asked to write for Don’t Stop, Girlypop! It has honestly been a dream come true to work with Jane and the team.
Xavier: The greatest achievement for myself has been that I can wake up everyday and make music for myself and others for a living!
Sarah performing with 3% at the Sydney Opera House.
What types of games do you like to play in your free time?
Sarah: I play a huge mix of games (cliche answer sorry), but I really love survival games like Grounded and all the classic cosy bangers like Stardew Valley of course. Baldur’s Gate is another standout for me. I also LOVE indie titles. My favourite game of all time is Spiritfarer! Oh and my OG fav since I was a kid, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.
Xavier: I'm also playing Nightreign at the moment. A great time to be a gamer I’d say!
Sarah & Xavier: We also play loads of co-op games together! Recently we dabbled in the early access of RuneScape: Dragonwilds for a while, smashed out heaps of Elden Ring with the co-op mod, and we just finished Split Fiction.
Have you ever worked on a game’s soundtrack before?
Sarah: If you can count Eternal Nights for Solium Infernum, then I would say I did a tiny bit of that one! All credit to Michael Allen for that amazing soundtrack though. In terms of game soundtracks specifically though, Xav and I are also working on the soundtrack for a game called Mystiques: Haunted Antiques. It’s an antiquing meets haunted house meets exploration game!
What artists, TV shows, movies, or other media do you draw inspiration from when making music for Don’t Stop, Girlypop!?
Sarah: Hell yeah! This was the question I was waiting for! I’ve got a huge list for this. Anything hyper-pop, Charli XCX, SOPHIE, etc. I DJ a bit and I only play hyper-pop or pop girls. In terms of pop but not hyper-pop (if that makes sense?), there’s Britney Spears, Kim Petras, Robyn, PinkPantheress, Sugababes, Doja Cat, and Carly Rae Jepson.
When it comes to visual media, I drew inspiration from all sorts of stuff, like Sailor Moon, Winx, Shirley Barber's wonderful fairy books, and the Barbie animated movies (specifically the Nutcracker and Swan Lake). I know it might sound weird but, when I’m writing music for Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, I also like to look at photos of cute animals, particularly baby bunnies!
Barbie in the Nutcracker.
What has been the best part of working on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! so far?
Sarah: All of it! I absolutely love hyper-pop, so getting to explore all of the sounds and nuances within the genre has been super satisfying. Getting to work with Jane as well has been incredible. She’s so passionate and hard-working, and the game freaking rules, so I’m always super happy when I create a song that Jane really loves. I’m just so happy I get to contribute to this work of art!
On a more specific note, figuring out the layers of the tracks has been really fun and interesting. Every track has multiple different versions, such as Combat 1, Combat 2, the Chill version, so it’s very different from making music for marketing or for an album.
Xavier: On a personal note, one of the best parts for me has been getting to work with Sarah in the studio again.
If you want to check out Sarah and Xavier’s work, you can follow them on Spotify by clicking the links below:
Sarah Wolfe
Spotify
Instagram
Xavier Dunn
Spotify
Instagram
To finish up, I just want to say how much I’ve loved working with Sarah and Xavier. Sarah just takes all of my crazy ideas and runs with them, even working with things like knife sounds and gun sounds! I usually start sitting for a while and thinking of ideas, then coming to them with the ideas for lyrics, beats, switch-ups, points in the song I want to hit, etc. I come up with the instrumental, the vibe, a bunch of references for those instrumentals, lyrical themes, a few keywords that should be included, and then I send them off and Sarah and Xavier make magic!
Like my process with Candice, we start with the ambient version, which leads to the pop version, which can then transfer into the industrial version (more hardcore hyper-pop), and then they’re all mixed together to form the final version. I really love having these super cute pop songs going into hardcore industrial sounds! As Sarah mentioned, creating multiple versions means they can be blended together in different ways so that they transfer seamlessly into one another while you’re playing the game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/
I give feedback throughout the process, but normally my feedback is just “can we make this more intense.” I want to start with that conventional pop and then really smack people over the head hard with the industrial music, the “horrible noise” as some people like to put it! Getting the beautiful pop is important, but getting the bang clash noise pop in there too is just as important to me. Another big priority for me is getting the lyrical content right, because so many game soundtracks don’t have lyrics and it sucks!!! I want to have lyrics that will stick in peoples’ heads. The songs just have this magical quality that they wouldn’t have without lyrics.
Sarah and Xavier are both working on a crazy song at the moment that involves a BPM switch, where the brief I gave them was just “start as Sabrina Carpenter and Britney Spears and then double the BPM.”
Most importantly, my mom and Sarah’s mom both love the soundtrack, so that’s what really matters, right???
I hope you enjoyed the second instalment of our dev storytime on the music of Don’t Stop, Girlypop! If you missed it, don’t forget to check out the first instalment, where we met with composer Candice Susnjar ❤
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2610650/view/532106822836815610
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