Through her work with Spector, Kaye caught the attention of The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, who used her on several sessions, including the albums "Beach Boys Today", "Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)", "Pet Sounds" and "Smile". Unlike other sessions, where she was free to work out her own bass lines, Wilson always came in with a very specific idea of what she should play. By "Pet Sounds", Wilson was asking musicians such as Kaye to play far more takes than typical sessions, often running over ten passes of a song, with sessions stretching well into the night. Kaye is often credited for playing on the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" single, but a session list compiled by Craig Slowinski for "The Smile Sessions" box-set liner notes states that, although she played on several sessions for the song, none of those recordings made the final edit as released on the single. Brian Wilson remembers Kaye as one of the session players hired for the many sessions devoted to the song: "The bass part was important to the overall sound. I wanted Carol Kaye to play not so much a Motown thing, but a Beach Boys-Phil Spector riff".