When bands get described as having a “cinematic” sound, there’s typically a type of film that’s being evoked: a sweeping epic, a magnum opus, fraught with love and peril, careening across time and space and indulging in the highest of drama. This music may be beautiful and engrossing, but something it rarely feels is natural, as a logical expression of the central message that the songs are trying to convey.

Clouds of the West, the Seattle group anchored by the duo of Quentin Ertel and Rose Bellini, are, by their own admission, purveyors of a cinematic sound. They’re right to use that descriptor, and their latest album, 2025’s Glass Radio, certainly does have a widescreen quality that feels transportive—and, packed as it is with uncommon indie rock instrumentation like French horn, pipe and Hammond organ, marimba, viola, and the all-important cello, it is the kind of music that threatens to run off and score a film at any moment.

But what Clouds of the West possess is an earthiness, a grounding sense of purpose that negates any sense of ostentation that might cling to bands with similar aims. Glass Radio’s songs, for the most part, play less like epics and more like humanist dramas, with a sound that’s lush and full, but rarely flashy. This is an intersection of indie rock and chamber pop that never feels like it’s using its orchestral elements as a means to grandiosity.

As guitarist and lyricist Ertel says, Clouds of the West was a project that, by design, was meant to be transient, ever-shifting in makeup and output. This current iteration of the band, he says, coalesced organically.

“The name of the band came from this idea that musicians would come and musicians would go,” Ertel says. “I started the project with a friend of mine that I’d played with in a band about 20 years ago, and started loosely trading songwriting ideas, and put out a couple of projects. On both of those [projects], Rose played cello. That was how we came to be collaborators, and once we started collaborating, it felt really good for both of us. 

“She started writing her own songs, and showed up with this batch of incredible pieces of music,” Ertel continues. “I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard it, and she was just like, ‘I gave it a shot! Here you go.’ I added some guitar parts, bass and vocals, and we did some down-and-dirty demos. We were having a lot of fun, so we went and made a record.”

The newly released vinyl edition of Glass Radio, designed by Nate Manny of 51 Eggs.

Though Ertel and Bellini had both been playing music their whole lives, they came from different sides of the tracks in their musical upbringings.

“I’m primarily, almost exclusively, a classical player,” cellist and composer Bellini says. “I did all my music training as a classical cellist. Songwriting was never on my radar as something to do, never mind thinking of it as something I was capable of doing. The impetus and perspective comes from the classical, since that’s really all I know. I was listening to a lot of songs and trying to think of how those were built and how I could meld what I know with that.”

Ertel, meanwhile, had cut his teeth in rock bands, never learning to read music. It didn’t take long for them to find that middle ground where their mutual talents could thrive, though, and it all came down to the treatment of the cello.

“The cello is a really beautiful instrument, and often it’s kind of the icing on the cake, and that’s how it’s used by a lot of people,” says Ertel. “But when we recorded it, there was a moment when I put a mic on [Rose’s] cello. When we listened back to it, I was like, ‘Wow, it’s really gritty and growly.’ And she said, ‘That’s how a cello sounds to someone who’s actually playing a cello.’ It’s like, we’re recording a 200-plus-year-old instrument, played by someone who’s an amazing player, through a very DIY lens.”

Despite the name Clouds of the West coming long before this formation of the band, it turns out to be a striking descriptor for much of the music on Glass Radio: if cinema comes to mind, it’s the windswept Americana of Badlands or Bonnie and Clyde, of doomed young love under endless skies. When Clouds of the West decide to show off, as on the penultimate, seven-minute stunner “Neapolitan,” the sprightly instrumentation and depth of lyrical detail make it feel like tearing through a short story and wishing for more.

The core group is rounded out by Zeke Keeble on percussion and Rebecca Young on bass, and a who’s who of Seattle ringers (including violist Erin Wight, marimbist Erin Jorgensen, French horn player Daniel Kuhlmann, among others) joining them for the recording of Glass Radio. Wednesday, Feb. 25, finds Clouds of the West celebrating Glass Radio’s vinyl release, with the Raven Quartet and Erin Jorgensen opening, making for a deeply compelling night of music.

Clouds of the West’s Glass Radio vinyl release is on Wednesday, Feb. 25, doors at 7 p.m. at the Sunset Tavern, Ballard. Find tickets here.