foamboy is a Portland-based pop duo comprised of producer Wil Bakula and vocalist Katy Ohsiek. Wil and Katy worked together for many years in other projects before creating their debut pop album, My Sober Daydream, in 2020 and releasing it in 2021. My Sober Daydream has launched this duo into a new stage of their careers. Foamboy has graced some of Portland’s favorite stages, including Mississippi Studios, Holocene, and Doug Fir Lounge. foamboy released their sophomore record Eating Me Alive in March 2024. While the new project still has that dreamy and dance-y nature to it, it paints a much darker sonic landscape, as Katy’s lyrics lament the rise and fall of a complicated and crushing relationship. The themes of the album also describe reckoning with the aftermath of public art, discovering queer identity, rejecting heteronormative narratives, surviving grad school, and giving up in a good way. The album contains a diverse offering of songs: the longer disco tracks the group is known for, short dreamy interludes, wavy electronic ballads, and distorted psych-inspired pop tunes. It is very much a reflection of the group working with a full seven-piece band for the last year, and contains a concoction of both electronic and live instruments. While the song aesthetics are varied, Wil took care in crafting the album as one unit, weaving the songs in and out of each other. Selections from Eating Me Alive have played on KCRW and KEXP, placed on Spotify and Apple Music editorial playlists, and led to press coverage from the Portland Mercury and Willamette Week, the latter describing foamboy as one of Portland’s “Best New Bands.” The band is currently playing frequent shows on the west coast and is in the process of recording the next LP. Ringdown – featuring composer-musicians Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan – is an “ecstatically blissful” (Night After Night) and “irresistible” (Feast of Music) cinematic electro-pop duo creating music that floats up from the dusty record bin between Brahms and Brandi Carlile, and centers around joy, human connection, and trying to inspire people to feel more love (and maybe even reach out to a crush). The duo was drawn to each other through mutual admiration of each other's work; Shaw has won a Pulitzer Prize and several Grammy Awards for her boundary-breaking compositions and contributed music to films including Beyoncé’s Homecoming and the Ken Burns documentary Leonardo da Vinci, and Parpan is a dynamic vocalist and folk-pop singer-songwriter who writes emotionally stirring lyrics and relishes in challenging how instruments are “supposed” to be played. Together as Ringdown, they forge a new realm that unlocks ways to write, sing, and perform that they can only access with each other, encouraging each to loosen their grip on the music they have created before and fully revel in the intricate pop music they have both always loved. Their songs are built on late nights of countless back-and-forths on tables covered in instruments and wires, sonically merging Shaw’s pull toward the abstract with Parpan’s directness, perhaps with a playlist of Sylvan Esso, Glasser, Robyn, James Blake, and The Blow in the background. The result is music that invites deep listening but also welcomes you to sing along, and – they hope – helps people feel everything they have been too afraid to feel. 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.