A song written by two Portland childhood friends is now playable inside one of the world's biggest video games. Fortnite Festival added “Hot Blooded” by New Constellations to its Jam Tracks lineup, putting the Portland duo's breakout single in free stage rotation starting Thursday and available for permanent purchase in players' music libraries for 500 V-Bucks.
The addition was reported by KOIN.com, which noted that “Hot Blooded” was added alongside Yung Miami's “Spend Dat” and The Long Faces' “Jane!” as part of the game's ongoing Jam Tracks rotation. Fortnite Festival, created by Epic Games and launched in 2023, is a music-based rhythm experience that let The Weeknd serve as headliner of its inaugural season, per the outlet's report. Players can now use “Hot Blooded” during different in-game experiences, whether performing on Main Stage or mixing loops in Jam Stage using standard controllers or legacy Rock Band and Guitar Hero peripheral instruments, according to Netto's Game Room.
From a Bedroom Recording to 220 Million Streams
New Constellations, which includes Harlee Case and Josh Smith, is based in Portland, Oregon. The pair are described in the KOIN report as “lifelong sidekicks,” and per the same account, they first recorded together in a bedroom at age 14, though the band was not officially founded until Case posted an open request for band collaborators on Instagram in 2015. Before reconnecting, Case worked as a folk soloist while Smith played drums in local rock bands.
New Constellations released “Hot Blooded” as a single on January 1, 2021, and the song has since become a slow-building sensation, growing through organic social media sharing rather than an immediate splash. As of August 2026, the track has more than 172 million Spotify streams according to Spotify, and it has surpassed 220 million total lifetime streams across all digital platforms, per Kworb.net. Its viral trajectory got a significant boost in early 2025 when actor Pedro Pascal featured the song as the audio track for an Instagram video post, a moment that helped generate over 300,000 user-created videos featuring the song across platforms, according to Nettwerk Music Group.
A Breakout Year Beyond the Game
The Fortnite placement arrives during a milestone stretch for New Constellations. The duo signed an exclusive licensing deal with Nettwerk Music Group to release its 13-track debut album, “It Comes in Waves,” on May 15, 2026, timed to coincide with the band's ninth anniversary performing under the New Constellations name, according to Nettwerk. The band has also released slowed and reverbed versions of “Hot Blooded,” along with a collaborative remix.
In June, New Constellations teamed up with fellow Portland indie electronic band STRFKR, which produced and engineered a reworked version of the hit titled “Hot Blooded (Rose City Rework),” a project that underscores the duo's ties to Portland's broader indie music scene. Beyond Fortnite, the song and the band's catalog have secured sync placements in EA Sports FC 2026, the Netflix film Voicemails from Isabella, and television shows including Good Trouble and Surface, per The Drake Amherst.
Festival Stages and an Overseas Tour Ahead
Across 2026, New Constellations made its debut performances at major national music festivals, including Lollapalooza, BottleRock Napa Valley, and Austin City Limits, following a 38-city sold-out U.S. tour supporting synthwave band The Midnight. Following that early-2026 U.S. run, the band scheduled its first European and UK headlining tour for next month, booking dates in London, Berlin, Paris, and Prague as the overseas promotional leg for its debut album, according to The Bodega.
For a duo that started as two teenagers recording songs in a bedroom, the Fortnite Festival feature lands as something of a capstone moment — proof that a song built on years of slow, organic growth can still find one of its biggest audiences yet inside a video game.
