When people perform highly coordinated joint actions to achieve common goals, such as playing a duet, hoisting a sail, or handing over an object, they may communicate while the joint action is being performed. I will present recent studies that asked how communication during joint action may improve joint action coordination. The results of these studies indicate that there are different ways in which improvements can be achieved. Causing prediction errors in a joint partner may be used to convey task relevant information unknown to a partner such as where to grasp an object or which path to take (sensorimotor communication, Pezzulo et al. 2019). But there is also a more direct route between basic forms of communication and joint action coordination. Simple utterances, songs, or counting may be used as timing signals that stabilize temporal coordination in joint action by reducing interpersonal variability. This reduction can help with keeping a stable tempo in rhythmic joint action, applying forces at the same time, or maintaining joint actions that require a certain temporal pattern. Further studying the links between joint action coordination and communication is worthwhile because it may provide clues as to how increasing needs for collaborative joint action may have driven the evolution of sophisticated communication systems.