Radiohead, one of the world’s most acclaimed rock bands, and Hans Zimmer, one of the planet’s most successful movie and TV composers, are joining forces to produce an exclusive track for BBC America's upcoming natural history series, Planet Earth: Blue Planet II (coming early 2018)! Talk about an epic collaboration for an epic show.

You'll get your first chance to hear the piece on September 27, when it will be featured in a five-minute prequel released globally by BBC Worldwide. Inspired by the sounds and musical palette of Planet Earth: Blue Planet II, Radiohead and Hans Zimmer are recording an orchestrally reimagined version of the Radiohead song '(ocean) bloom' from their 2011 album The King of Limbs, at London’s iconic AIR studios with the BBC Concert Orchestra. The collaboration, which will also see Radiohead’s Thom Yorke rerecord the vocals, is being produced by Russell Emanuel of Bleeding Fingers Music, the company which also crafted the BAFTA & Emmy-nominated score to BBCA’s Planet Earth II.

This introduction to the show, which is narrated by the incredible Sir David Attenborough, also features an array of some of the most awe-inspiring shots and highlights from the new series, as well as several exclusive scenes that will not air in any of the seven episodes that will broadcast on BBC America in early 2018. Planet Earth: Blue Planet II will be scored by Hans Zimmer, Jacob Shea and Dave Fleming for Bleeding Fingers Music.

A short tease of the prequel and reworked track, titled '(ocean) bloom,' will be released online on Tuesday, September 26, and the full prequel will make its debut in stunning 4K at the world premiere of Planet Earth: Blue Planet II at London’s BFI Imax on September 27.

Thom Yorke of Radiohead shares our excitement for the project: “Bloom was inspired by the original Blue Planet series so it’s great to be able to come full circle with the song and reimagine it for this incredible landmark’s sequel. Hans is a prodigious composer who effortlessly straddles several musical genres so it was liberating for us all to work with such a talent and see how he wove the sound of the series’ and Bloom together.”

In turn, Hans Zimmer says: “Bloom appears to have been written ahead of its time as it beautifully reflects the jaw-dropping lifeforms and seascapes viewers are introduced to in Blue Planet II. Working with Thom, Jonny and the boys has been a wonderful diversion and it’s given me an interesting peek into their musical world. They’ve been incredible to work with and I hope everyone likes the track.”

And now, here's what you can look forward to from the show itself! Planet Earth: Blue Planet II will take viewers on a revelatory and magical journey into the greatest, yet least known part of our planet — our oceans. The seas are by turn tempestuous and serene, exquisitely beautiful and bleakly forbidding, and are the lifeblood of the planet: driving our weather, regulating our climate and ultimately supporting all life on Earth. In recent years, our knowledge of what goes on beneath the waves has been transformed. By using cutting-edge breakthroughs in science and technology to explore this final frontier, the series will reveal the astonishing characters, otherworldly places and extraordinary new animal behaviors. Warm and compelling stories about marine habitats and their characterful inhabitants will build people’s emotional relationship with our oceans and bring a new perspective to this little-known world.

Broadcast in 2001, the original, multi-award winning The Blue Planet was the BBC Studios Natural History Unit’s unprecedented look at the world’s oceans, the scale and breadth of which had never been seen before. Twenty years on, the Blue Planet II team have spent four years mounting 125 expeditions, visited 39 countries, and filmed off every continent and across every ocean.