Lilly Bechtel is the songwriter and vocalist behind the indie recording project Night Teacher, as well as a trauma-informed teacher of yoga, meditation, and poetry. The title of her sophomore record recently released on First City Artists, Year of the Snake, refers to a time for transformation. Bechtel references the molting process of her favorite animal on album standout “Ecdysis,” spinning poetic tension between the animal necessity and human will involved in making change: If you can’t survive it / become somebody different. 

Bechtel’s deep understanding of the disjointed and oftentimes nonverbal nature of personal evolution comes from experience. She was expelled from high school for behavioral issues, and spent much of her adolescence in isolated, therapeutic settings and treatment centers, confronting eating disorders and substance abuse. Now she helps to heal traumatic stress in women’s correctional facilities, veterans hospitals, rehabs, nursing homes, and Kindergarten classrooms. “It’s not always possible to make sense of trauma with language,” Bechtel says. “But you don’t have to put words to your story in order to feel seen, or held, or safe.”  

Bechtel has released two full-length albums as Night Teacher—a propulsive sonic world praised by Atwood Magazine as “a warm, gritty fever dream of heartbreak, transience, and self-discovery” and by Glide Magazine as “an immersive, cascading dynamic that flows around the listener, forcing whoever is in earshot to turn their head and follow along to the mesmerizing songwriting.” Year of the Snake received nods from Stereogum, NPR, Northern Transmissions, MAGNET Magazine, The Current and more, and for Bechtel, is just the beginning of a new cycle.