Denver Guitarist-Turned-Producer don. Drops Indie Debut Ripples
After years of playing other artists’ music, the guitarist and producer finds his voice on Ripples

Ripples cover design by Jonah Terry
(Denver, CO) After a decade of making magic happen for other artists as a gigging and session musician, Denver-based guitarist-turned-producer don. has come into his own on his indie solo debut, Ripples. The “guitar-stack house” EP, with four tracks each named after a primary source of love in his life, dropped on all music platforms May 16, 2025. The idea for the EP fell into place once don. realized that the then-unnamed first track, “Annie,” was effectively a tribute to his partner Annie. While don. is perhaps best known for his live and studio collaborations with other Colorado musicians, he dropped his first solo project last year, a lo-fi instrumental EP called Sleepless FM, released via Arden Records. Ripples is not only his independent debut, it’s also the first time he feels that he’s truly harnessed his artistic voice. Tapping into his love of minimalist house music, don. created the EP by playing around with his own guitar loops as if they were ripped samples, balancing the clean tones he originally recorded with guitar notes filtered and processed beyond recognition. The combination of clean-toned and enhanced guitar “stacks” that make up the project led to him coining the genre “guitar-stack house,” a guitar-based, chillwave-influenced, ambient electronic confection.
On Ripples, don. channels artists like Slenderbodies and Rüfüs Du Sol, slowing the tempo down to evoke a house vibe within an 100 beats per minute range, rather than traditional house’s 115 to 130 BPM range. Letting go of the genre expectations of traditional songwriting, don. embraced simplicity and allowed the natural movement of the music to guide his production. “I wasn’t so much thinking about the chords and the melody, I was just thinking, ‘This sounds and feels good,’” he explains. “Owning this happier, more ambient, positive sound, was not only new for me, but I also felt like I had taken a step in originality, owning some of the minimalism and letting less be more.” With groovy guitar tones emulating the gentle flow of water, Ripples dips into the instrumental surf origins of chillwave, calling to mind late 2000s indietronica darlings like Washed Out and Toro Y Moi.
Ripples arrives just in time to be the soundtrack to your summer, taking you from pool days and backyard bbqs to sunsets and sipping rooftop cocktails. “This EP is chillhouse for sunny drives, with a contemplative thought process. It would make just as good background music as it would music for solo contemplation,” says don. “So much of what I appreciate about music is that it is an escapist medium, so I try to facilitate that in a way that allows a personal confrontation. We’re escaping it while confronting it at the same time.”
Ripples is out now on all music platforms.