Clouds of the West was founded by guitarist-songwriter Quentin Ertel and multi-instrumentalist Curtis Andreen, and recently joined by cellist-composer Rose Bellini. This latest chapter, a collaboration between Bellini and Ertel, marks a reimagining of the band’s sound into something richly textured and deeply expressive. Their songs blend orchestral detail, lyrical depth, and emotional clarity, blurring the lines between chamber music and indie rock. The result is cinematic soundscapes where lush strings meet raw, human songwriting. The latest Clouds release, Glass Radio (October 2025), captures the tension between grandeur and intimacy. Cellos, layered guitars and vintage amplifiers form the heart of a sound that drifts between the sacred and the everyday, concert hall and dive bar, memory and dream. The music invites listeners into a space where emotion and craft, stillness and motion, coexist, each song unfolding like a film scene, with fragments of longing, nostalgia, and transcendence carried on melody and texture. 

Glass Radio is available on all streaming platforms and may be purchased on Bandcamp. Limited edition 180 gram vinyl will be available in December 2025.

While Clouds of the West has taken different forms over the years, this era honors its roots while venturing into entirely new sonic terrain. The band also released two albums in 2023, Best Day Ever and Born In Moonlight, a collaboration between Curtis Andreen and Quentin Ertel. These feature fuzzed out guitars, keyboard swells, and two decades of pent up songwriting energy that took inspiration from past work together as part of the bombastic garage-surf trio, The Tremens.