Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jon DeRosa has made several forms of mysterious, darkly atmospheric music since the 1990s, from indie rock and folk to ambient and drone. First drawing attention with his gothic folk band Dead Leaves Rising, he also made dark country as part of the duo Pale Horse and Rider, and his long-running project Aarktica has explored guitar-based instrumental soundscapes, dream pop, and ethereal folk, with jazz and Indian classical influences. DeRosa's solo albums under his own name, A Wolf in Preacher's Clothes (2012) and Black Halo (2015), contain melancholy chamber pop influenced by Scott Walker and Roy Orbison. In addition to his own projects, DeRosa has worked with Stephin Merritt (the Magnetic Fields), Flare, Rivulets, and others.

Jon DeRosa was born in 1978 in Lodi, New Jersey, also the hometown of one of his formative influences, Misfits founder Glenn Danzig. He studied classical and flamenco guitar, and began writing music as a teenager. His dark folk acts Fade and Dead Leaves Rising opened for various Projekt-signed bands, and the latter released its debut album, Shadow Complex, in 1997. DeRosa lost hearing in his right ear in 1998, and began making primarily instrumental guitar-based music in order to express how he perceived sound. After briefly making more electronic, beat-driven music under the name Still, his debut album of glacial ambient rock as Aarktica, No Solace in Sleep, was released by Silber Records in 2000. Dead Leaves Rising released its second album, Waking Up on the Wrong Side of No One, in 2001, and DeRosa started the country duo Pale Horse and Rider with Marc Gartman, releasing material on Silber and Darla.

Aarktica also issued albums on Darla, starting with 2002's Or You Could Just Go Through Your Whole Life and Be Happy Anyway, which shifted to an electronic dream pop sound. Following DeRosa's studies with minimalist pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, Aarktica began incorporating Indian classical influences on albums like 2003's Pure Tone Audiometry. DeRosa frequently performed and recorded with the chamber pop band Flare, and played a role in Stephin Merritt's 2006 opera The Peach Blossom Fan, additionally appearing on the songwriter's Showtunes album. DeRosa also contributed to albums by Vlor, the experimental collaborative project of Silber founder Brian John Mitchell.

In 2011, DeRosa released Anchored, his first EP under his own name. Featuring cellist Julia Kent (Rasputina, Antony and the Johnsons) and horn player Jon Natchez (Beirut, the War on Drugs), the release was closer in spirit to orchestral pop of the '50s and '60s than his previous projects. The more lushly arranged full-length A Wolf in Preacher's Clothes was issued by Rocket Girl in 2012. Black Halo, featuring a song co-written with Merritt and guest vocals by Carina Round (Puscifer), followed in 2015. DeRosa remained active as Aarktica, releasing the full-length Mareación, inspired by ayahuasca ceremonies, in 2019, as well as the Black Tape for a Blue Girl collaboration Eating Rose Petals a year later. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi