Ethan Desautels

Ethan's personal, active music project is called DonutShoes. While allowing the project to be genre-agnostic, DonutShoes is primarily a chiptune act with a focus on mid-tempo EDM and drum & bass.

As close to home as New York and Boston, and as far out as Paris and Bornholm, DonutShoes has performed in a wide range of venues and festivals, including PAX East, MAGFest & MAGStock, Chipwrecked, and Boston Bitdown.

DonutShoes has released a number of EPs and singles — available on Bandcamp — as well as additions to multiple compilation albums. Notably, he's appeared on chipbreak alliance by Sydney City Chiptune Ministries, multiple chiptune tribute cover albums by Kickblips Crew, and charity benefit albums like CONTINUE and Chip 4 Change.

With collaborator Nada Abouzeid, Ethan has helped organize a chiptune show called Bit Rot. Currently on hiatus, Bit Rot, which took place at Wonderville in Brooklyn, NY, aimed to bridge the local New York chiptune scene with the larger, global chiptune scene by booking local chiptune artists and visualists, and showcasing international acts remotely. Acts that have played Bit Rot include Battlemode, Cyanide Dansen, nmlstyl, Maxo, Tobokegao, Low Stakes, and others.

Howdy! I'm Ethan, a composer, sound designer, and creator interested in everything wild, wonky, and whimsical. I've been making music since 1993 and have been playing games for just as long. I'm working full time as a freelancer making sound effects and music for games, Twitch streams, and other media.

I earned my degree in Studio Composition at SUNY Purchase where I learned music production, theory, and composition, and began the ever-evolving process of crafting my sound and musical voice. Soon after, I took a course with the School of Video Game Audio, learning the fundamentals of sound effects and implementation using Wwise. In 2023, my game audio journey kicked off when I joined my friends The Moonlight Jammers for Ludum Dare 53, doing SFX for the game Rain On Their Parade! which claimed 3rd place in Audio and 2nd place overall! Since then I've participated in more game jams, began taking commissions for streamers & small independent projects, and in March of 2025 I celebrated my first credit on a commercial release doing SFX and music for Bundle of Joy.

Whenever possible, I stay creative both independently and collaboratively. I continue to make music as my personal project DonutShoes, with a big focus on making chiptune music with Game Boys (See the Chiptune page for more info), I dabble in creative coding and visuals using Processing, and I like to build instruments ranging from cigar box guitars to unconventional musical experiments. I'm always ready for a cool collaboration; I help organize the themed chiptune cover compilation albums with Kickblips Crew and I'm a regular participant in the made-in-a-weekend album jams hosted by the online digital fusion community Cloud Crew.