“I fell in love with [Andersen’s] story The Little Mermaid and was fascinated by the idea of a female character sacrificing and enduring intense pain to get what she wanted,” she says.

Leppin’s interpretation turned out to be a personal prophecy. Mellow Diamond went through endless release delays and hand-wringing by record labels. In the meantime, she suffered nerve damage in her elbow, limiting her ability to play her signature instrument, the cello.

During her recovery, she wrote and recorded using the mellotron — an electro-mechanical keyboard — saying the songs came “out of pure desperation to have solo material.” This brought about a second solo release, the Songs for Voice and Mellotron EP.

Leppin’s biggest step thus far came last January. Exasperated from years of trying to put out her music, the now-D.C.-based musician announced the launch of her own record label, Wedderburn Records.

“There were some lengthy talks with labels that didn’t exactly do me any favors,” says the Glover Park resident. “People talk about glass ceilings and honestly I think I had one hanging over me, too.”

That move has been followed by a gutsy decision: On March 25, Leppin will release Mellow Diamond and Songs for Voice and Mellotron at the same time. Both are under the project name Mellow Diamond.

“It is a huge relief for me,” she says. “The records are done and since I have my own label I don’t have to wait.”

The two projects demonstrate Leppin’s virtuosic understanding of timbre and space, but each has a distinct identity.

Mellow Diamond is lush and features more than a dozen instruments, all played by Leppin. The textures include cello, percussion, synthesizers, radio frequency noise, koto, pedal steel and her haunting vocals.

Songs for Voice and Mellotron, on the other hand, consists of only the two titular instruments. The tense restraint is a reminder of Leppin’s injury at the time. Leppin and Wedderburn Records will co-release the EP with New York label Fast Speaking Music.

Despite overcoming multiple challenges, Leppin confesses she was still hesitant about the simultaneous release. She got a final push of encouragement from a familiar name in D.C. music.

“I worried about it for a while and got mixed opinions, and then I called Ian MacKaye,” she says. “He thought releasing two records simultaneously was bold.”

Mellow Diamond plays the Songbyrd Music House March 24, with Pree and Roz and the Rice Cakes.

Leppin announced today that she’s starting an imprint called Wedderburn Records. The label’s first release will be a single from Janel and Anthony, the experimental folk duo she shares with her husband, guitarist Anthony Pirog.

The cellist says she derived the label’s name from a piece of land that has been in her family for more than a century, a wooded oasis in Vienna, Virginia, once called “Midgetville.”

“Basically, it’s a really magical place,” Leppin says. She grew up on the Wedderburn land, gathering with friends and playing music there. Once upon a time, she says, “it was all just virgin forest and hand-built cottages that my ancestors built.” (The “Midgetville” moniker comes from an old legend that little people lived on the land.) The property has been whittled down over time — an emotional process the Washington Post documented in 2004 — but it holds a place in Leppin’s heart. “Wedderburn” is also her middle name, she adds.

Wedderburn Records isn’t just a tribute to the family land, however. Leppin says both she and Pirog have a “huge backlog” of unreleased music, and she’d grown exhausted working with other labels on it. Facing red tape, creative compromises and disagreements over credits — “I still have to fight to make people think that I write my own music,” she says — Leppin decided she’d just release the material herself.

Inspiration also came from the late David Bowie. “He died with a huge amount of albums behind him,” Leppin says, “and I can’t even get anyone to agree on the terms of a contract for one album.”

After Leppin releases the Janel and Anthony single in the coming weeks, she expects to debut her first solo album on March 21, followed by recordings from a “legendary” artist. (She declines to identify the performer until details are finalized.)

Leppin isn’t sure what kinds of sounds her label will focus on, but her own work reveals a fascination with the mystical — similar to the special power she traces back to the Wedderburn land.

“I’m really just interested in the kind of people who can capture the magic. Whatever that means,” Leppin says. “Music you can’t quite put your finger on.”

Watch: Janel Leppin performs live for WAMU 88.5’s Bandwidth.fm