Cinder Well

Cinder Well is the musical project of Los Angeles-based songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker. Cinder Well’s new album, A Blooming Body, was recorded at Hen House Studios in Venice Beach, California by Harlan Steinberger, to be released on July 17.

Cinder Well creates dark, rich and tender compositions which nod to, but also stray from traditional musical languages. By comparison to the more diaristic tones of previous releases (2015’s self-titled EP, 2018’s The Unconscious Echo, 2020’s No Summer, 2023’s Cadence), A Blooming Body feels like glimpsing scattered vignettes of a whole world rather than a sequential narrative from beginning to end. Through textured arrangements, A Blooming Body expands the sonic world of Cinder Well, resulting in an immersive, visceral and unconventional collection of songs. The music on A Blooming Body shimmers with clarity, Cinder Well’s annunciation clear, and yet there are depths to the stories told here that plunge beneath the ethereal, acoustic surface.

On A Blooming Body, Cinder Well creates a sound that is expansive and cinematic, and the kind of experimentation which led to her composing the original theme song and score for the BBC TV series Small Prophets (written, directed by, and starring Mackenzie Crook alongside Michael Palin). Through shifts in perspective, and a sound which knows when to bolster the lyrics, and when to let them speak for themselves, Cinder Well’s music becomes universal on A Blooming Body, laying bare a weight that exists not in guitar tracks or distortion, but the kind we carry with us day to day.

Cinder Well has toured throughout the US and Europe and has shared the stage with artists including Lankum, Pallbearer, Reverend Kristen Michael Hayter, and 40 Watt Sun. Recent festival appearances include Roadburn, Amplifest, Prepare the Ground, and End of the Road. In 2024, Cinder Well performed at NPR’s Tiny Desk.