Cobalt Beep(ing)
Nope! I absolutely didn’t know that! In fact, you’ve piqued my curiosity: the passage sounds so lyrical and well-blended that an additional meaning seems almost too good to be true. So let’s prove it! With the mighty power of digital signal processing (all done with the free tool Audacity)!
That’s a spectrogram of Cobalt Thief during that part of the song (roughly 2:27 to 2:52). See the section of horizontal lines in the top half? That’s the chiptune Morse code.
That’s a zoomed-in view of the section. The 7500Hz line is particularly strong (though there’s a lot of harmonics), so it’s convenient to look at. So here we’ve got [.–. .-.. .], three letters: PLE in Morse code.
I highlighted the dots and dashes throughout the passage here. The pattern is unmistakeable: only the locations for character breaks require a little experimentation. I arrived at this on my second try:
.–. .-.…- … . ……-.. .–. …. .. –
… which translates, as you said, to: PLEASE HELP HIM. A very cool double-meaning for a musical phrase in the song.
