Ringdown | Featured Artist
Ringdown's music is like calling your first love on a rotary telephone, percussively tearing out the hammers from a 1924 vintage upright, and flinging each of them into space while you wait for every heartache you've ever felt to quietly return. Collaborators Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee—who between the two of them have a Pulitzer Prize, a handful of Grammys, and a "Best Drum Major" Award—describe Ringdown as an electronic cinematic pop duo from Portland, Oregon. Others have described Ringdown as the love child of Johannes Brahms and Brandi Carlile—if they were born in the same century and if Brahms was a queer woman. You decide!
“‘Two-Step’ is about letting go of your inner critic and trusting your own intuition,” say Caroline and Danni Lee, who are partners on and off the stage. “It’s about forward momentum toward things that feel good. It’s about trusting that sometimes what may seem like a wrong turn could be the best route you’ve ever taken. Also dancing. It's about dancing.”
Ringdown’s intricate pop music floats up from the dusty record bin between Brahms and Brandi Carlile, reflecting the joy the duo delight in as they explore the spaces between genres and their various musical pursuits; Caroline has won a Pulitzer Prize and several Grammy Awards for her boundary-breaking compositions and contributed music to films including Beyoncé’s Homecoming, Danni Lee writes emotionally stirring lyrics and relishes in challenging how instruments are “supposed” to be played. The pair find additional inspiration from artists including Sylvan Esso, Glasser, Robyn, James Blake, boygenius, The Blow, and more. The duo first began performing at intimate shows in 2022, quietly releasing their songs periodically.
Ringdown songs are also rooted in celebration and admiration of human emotion and love, written while the duo was falling in love themselves. “For both of us, music has always been a means of communicating beyond language. We hope Ringdown’s music helps people feel everything they have been too afraid to feel,” continue Caroline and Danni Lee. “We hope it gives people the permission to feel and share those feelings. We joke and say that our greatest wish is that this music might make two people fall in love. So please make the first move and send our songs to your crush.”
Learn more about Ringdown and their work at the links below:
official website | bandcamp | instagram
Ringdown appears on these Resonance programs: