Ringdown | Featured Artist
RINGDOWN is the Portland-based electro-pop duo of vocalist and folk-pop songwriter Danni Lee Parpan and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw. Together, they make music that is cinematic, strange, tender, catchy, a little unhinged, and very much its own thing.
Their debut album, Lady on the Bike, was released on Nonesuch Records in 2025, and somehow manages to contain synths, prepared piano, viola, drum programming, soaring pop melodies, existential questions, and a song called “Crazy.” It’s an album about love, connection, community, personal growth, political anger, joy, and the general mess of being a person.
The album got its name from a very Portland-adjacent moment. Before a big Ringdown show at Big Ears Festival, Caroline and Danni hid handmade album covers around Knoxville. Then a woman rode past on a bicycle, spotted one, and yelled, “Hey Ringdown! I just found an album cover!” They were overjoyed. The moment became a little band mantra: for younger you, for younger me, for future us, and for the lady on the bike.
Ringdown is a musical playground where two wildly curious musicians get to mess around with everything they love. Their sound lives somewhere between electronic pop, orchestral music, folk, experimental music, and whatever happens when two brilliant weirdos decide the rules are optional. They’ve collaborated with Sō Percussion and Portland’s New Body Electric, and Ringdown’s music has been described as “ecstatically blissful.”
As for the band’s name: A ringdown is the theorized sound two black holes make in the final microseconds when they merge, a sub-bass whoosh and glide that suggest the world’s biggest synthesizer, sighing in contentment. This might also describe how Ringdown’s music sounds – or at least how it feels to the band. Ringdown is working on a debut album for Nonesuch Records and has performed across the U.S. and abroad at Big Ears, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Public Records, SXSW, Thuringia Bach Festival, and more.
The duo, who are partners on and off the stage, split their time between Portland, OR and New York, NY. Learn more at ringdownmusic.com and follow them on what they are proud to share is “their friend Virginia’s favorite Instagram account” at @ringdownmusic.
Learn more about Ringdown and their work at the links below:
official website | bandcamp | instagram
RINGDOWN + RESONANCE
We are so grateful for our connection to this powerhouse
CHOIR GRRRL: In 2025, Ringdown joined Resonance for CHOIR GRRRL, our boundary-pushing collaboration celebrating women making adventurous music in Portland. Together, we created new arrangements of Ringdown songs for the duo and Resonance’s treble choir.
Coming in 2028: Caroline Shaw is Resonance Ensemble’s 2028 commissioned composer, so we’re not quite done making music together.
They sponsor our cocktails! : Ringdown is also the official cocktail sponsor of Brunch & Bad Choices, because apparently even our questionable decisions need excellent musical accompaniment.