In the middle of Ethel Cain’s set at Outside Lands, she made a bit of an uncanny request. 

“I know we’re in California,” the Florida-via-Alabama-via-Pittsburgh musician said, “but before this next one, can you give me as loud of a ‘yeehaw’ as you can manage?” The crowd, of course, obliged. But it proved to be a bit of a pump-fake — a campy ask standing in opposition to her music.

Cain, whose non-stage name is Hayden Anhedonia, has a musical vision that is all-encompassing and ambitious: She and her band played haunting, almost biblical dirges while visions of a gritty rural South — abandoned homes, muddy waters, mile-long grassy fields — were projected behind her. She began her set with a nearly eight-minute number titled “A House in Nebraska,” a tale of finding refuge in another person while laying in a derelict, second-floor bedroom. 

It’s an intense, utterly resounding song — as are many of the tracks on her breakthrough album “Preacher’s Daughter,” an almost mythological journey about lovers on the lam that ends in murder and cannibalism.

But Ethel Cain is good at those sorts of head fakes. Consider “American Teenager” — a song that she describes as an “anti-war, anti-patriotism fake pop song.” It’s a perfect pop song if you don’t think through the lyrics too intensely, enough so that President Barack Obama just so happened to put it in his annual end-of-year playlist in December.

Her star power was apparent, even though her set took place in the no man’s land 2:30 p.m. slot on a Friday. On the most brooding numbers, Cain had the uncanny ability to hold the audience’s total attention. Even idle audience chatter in between songs felt like it washed away once Cain’s voice — resonant and choral — hung in the air. 

And she composed herself like an experienced star, holding her mic out to let the crowd sing even if only a few hundred people near the front knew all the words. It didn’t matter — those who did know the lyrics sang them like lines from a book of hymns.

“God loves you, but not enough to save you,” she sang on “Sun Bleached Flies,” her penultimate song. They’re stirring, fatalistic words — even without the context of the album’s narrative. And Cain — a transgender woman born and raised in a devout Christian home in the South — singing these words carries even greater weight.  

Cain seemed to understand the gravity of her presence, especially to her most adoring fans standing at the barrier. She hopped offstage to sing “Crush,” her final song of the night (and make a quick quip about her musical hero, Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine). The crowd coalesced near the barrier, singing her words back to her. It was a moment of total intimacy, even as throngs of people watched from the grass. When she finished, she hugged an audience member tight. The love was mutual.