Ashen Ringlets

Well this makes our day! Jon Turner, who engineered the classic Cocteau Twins album Head Over Heels, liked one of our covers. Thanks Jon!

2 days ago | [YT] | 44

Ashen Ringlets

J. Stephen Roberts is the songwriter behind Ashen Ringlets, but his distinctive guitar playing is just as central to the band's signature sound.

Rather than using a conventional flat pick, Roberts performs almost exclusively with a fingerstyle technique, wearing metal finger picks on each finger. The approach grew out of his early training as a classical guitarist, where playing with the fingers rather than a plectrum formed the foundation of his technique.

Over time, Roberts discovered that fingerstyle playing gave him far greater control over the complex layers of arpeggios, harmonics, and interwoven melodies that define the shimmering, dreamlike textures of Ashen Ringlets' music. The addition of finger picks provides greater attack, clarity, and sustain than bare fingertips alone, producing a brighter, more articulate tone while preserving the expressive independence of each finger. This combination of classical technique and modern amplification has become one of the defining characteristics of the Ashen Ringlets sound.

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2 days ago | [YT] | 8

Ashen Ringlets

Would you like to see us do a Q&A livestream here? If so, what time zone are you in and what time works best for you?

1 week ago | [YT] | 4

Ashen Ringlets

Ellen Rowell's vocals are a trademark of the Ashen Ringlets sound, but her bass playing is also a big part of what defines our music.

Ellen's style as a bassist is rooted in jazz and R&B. She originally studied on an upright bass early in her career. This approach results in the driving grooves that define a lot of our original music.

When it comes to covers, such as on our recent take on Cocteau Twins' "Lorelei", Ellen's bass playing brings a distinctive edge to our versions. A lot of indie rock bass lines are plucked with a pick. This is the case with Cocteau Twins. For "Lorelei", Ellen played a more driving, R&B-influenced bass line. This helps give our version of "Lorelei" its own identity, and breaks a bit with indie rock "orthodoxy."

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1 week ago | [YT] | 30

Ashen Ringlets

Thanks everyone for checking out our latest cover, "Lorelei" by Cocteau Twins. Just a reminder, we have physical media available, as well as digital releases via bandcamp. Check out the links in the comments below to pick up our music and support what we do.
All the best
-J and Ellen of Ashen Ringlets

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1 week ago | [YT] | 36

Ashen Ringlets

More about the song "Waltzing Days in Maidenhead"

Like many dream-pop and ethereal songs, "Waltzing Days in Maidenhead" doesn't tell a straightforward story. Instead, it creates a mood built around memory, longing, idealization, and perhaps obsession. The lyrics originated from a dream, so it's worth approaching them symbolically rather than literally.

"Waltzing days in Maidenhead"

The title and recurring refrain seem to represent an idealized past—a place and time preserved in memory. A waltz is graceful, romantic, and cyclical, suggesting recollections that the narrator revisits repeatedly.
"Maidenhead" may be the actual English town, but it also carries connotations of innocence, youth, and first love. The phrase feels less like a geographic location and more like a dreamscape where significant memories reside.

"Oh she said this is my life let me live it in your head"
This may be the emotional core of the song.
The woman isn't merely being remembered; she seems to be asking to continue existing within the narrator's imagination. This could suggest a lost love who survives only through memory, an idealized muse, or a dream figure who becomes psychologically real.

The line blurs the boundary between reality and memory.
"She was a tattered little princess / In the shadows of the gardens in the trees"

The imagery combines beauty and fragility.
A "princess" suggests enchantment or idealization, but "tattered" implies damage, imperfection, or sadness. She is not a fairy-tale princess but a broken one.

The gardens and trees create an almost secret, hidden world—a place removed from ordinary life.

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1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 27

Ashen Ringlets

Behind the song: "Waltzing Days in Maidenhead"

The song is a meditation on a remembered woman. Whether she was a real person, a dream figure, a lost love, or some combination of all three, she survives in the imagination as a beautiful, fragile, slightly tragic presence.

The central theme is that memory can become its own reality. The "waltzing days in Maidenhead" are gone, but they continue to live on in the mind, where they remain warm, vivid, romantic, and endlessly revisited—like a dream that never completely fades.

It's track 2 on the EP, also called Waltzing Days in Maidenhead.

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1 month ago | [YT] | 37

Ashen Ringlets

Behind the song: "August Waters"

track 03 from Waltzing Days in Maidenhead

The song was written at the height of summer, when everything is kind of hazy and bright. That’s sort of reflected in the lyrics in the verse, about trying to make sense of tangled thoughts and memories of someone, filled with contradictory feelings: “I couldn’t see through to you / Sea and sky blend red together.” How often do we feel things about someone that later seem like some kind of temporary madness? Or at least later you can’t really understand why you didn’t see the problems with a relationship at the time.

The way our song production process has always worked is I write a song and usually record it in a basic form. Back when I wrote this one, I first recorded it on a four-track recording. That was the first recording that I introduced to Ellen and she loved the song instantly. From there, we move on to recording a final version. Originally, we intended to put a chorus effect on the vocal, but instead we ended up doubling Ellen’s vocals. This gives a bit more of a natural chorus effect. Ellen loved the melody and came up with a series of harmony parts for it. She also came up with the vocal riffs that come toward the end of the song during the quieter break before the guitar solo. These are really beautiful, reverb-heavy vocal parts that create this angelic, melancholic ethereal effect.

-J Stephen

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1 month ago | [YT] | 22

Ashen Ringlets

A few quick updates:

Our cover of Cocteau Twins' "Lorelei" has been finished for a while now. The video is currently being made by our friend filmaker Fernando Silva. When that's done, it will be posted. We look forward to sharing that with everyone!

We are recording two new original songs right now, "Lily Scent" and "I'm On My Way." Drums for these will be tracked next week, and we'll finish everything else for them after that. Both of these songs will end up on our second EP, which will also include the song "Gray," already released as the B-side for the single "Waiting for the Time."

We are also currently recording another Cocteau Twins cover, "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops." This is an old favorite for us, and we're really enjoying interpreting this song. We've laid down the drums and some basic guitars. Ellen did a scratch vocal for it last week. She'll be laying down the bass shortly.

Much love to everyone, please help us keep the music alive...
Ellen and J

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1 month ago | [YT] | 62

Ashen Ringlets

The bassline for "Waltzing Days in Maidenhead" was originally played through a fuzz pedal. For the final version on our debut EP, we didn't go with that tone, especially to differentiate the bass tone from the many fuzz-laden guitars on the track. What do you think, would you like to hear this song with fuzz on the bass?

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2 months ago | [YT] | 14