The Seatbelts

The Seatbelts are a Japanese musical collective formed in 1998 and led by composer 菅野よう子. Assembled in the late 1990s for the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, the group worked as a flexible studio collective rather than a fixed band, combining a core lineup with additional studio musicians and collaborators. Its membership has included 渕野繁雄, 林ミカ, 本田雅人, 今堀恒雄, 山根麻以, and 村田陽一. Released through Victor Entertainment, the group's work for Cowboy Bebop included "Tank!", "Ask DNA", "Space Lion", and "Gotta Knock a Little Harder". That material drew on contemporary jazz, instrumental jazz, blues, rock, funk, and big band influences. The group's flexible structure let The Seatbelts shift styles as needed, moving between loose, improvisational passages and tightly arranged compositions, and the sound was shaped to match Cowboy Bebop's mix of space western, noir, and genre-hopping storytelling. Beyond that series, the group also recorded anime songs such as "Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town", "Aku no Tenshi to Seigi no Akuma", "Be My Friend", and "Bokura no Tsubasa (僕らの翼)".