Night Teacher is a collaboration between multi-media artist and singer-songwriter Lilly Bechtel, whose haunting voice and piercing lyrics combine with drummer, writer, and producer Matt Wyatt to create a world that orbits between experimental doom-folk and electro-groove. Listen to their latest release “Dear Ellen” here.
Since the 2020 release of their debut record Night Teacher, the group has been featured on NPR, won the Music With a Conscience Series, and noted by the music magazine Relix as an “artist to pay attention to.” Music writer Robb Donker describes the group’s 2021 single ‘Even When It’s Bent’: "Wyatt's percussive tones sort of feel like they are improvised, as if Wyatt found things around the house to play with, which is what (for me) persists in making their texture so organic and interesting… Bechtel's vocal aesthetic works perfectly as a storyteller; there is at once a sage presence in her powerful lilt, but it is also one that feels broken- as hopelessness and hope play a fierce game of tug of war." In December of ‘21, Night Teacher began translating their studio work into live performance and touring regionally, most often lately as a Folk-Rock Trio with dream and spook woven through in equal measure, with Lilly Bechtel on guitar and lead vocals, Cathy Monnes on cello and supporting vocals, and Jordan Perry on supporting vocals and lead guitar.
In April 2023 Night Teacher’s music video, Desert Psalm, made by an independent, all-female film crew in the south of Texas, was featured in American Dance Festival “Movies by Movers” and was awarded Best Song in the Experimental Film and Music Video festival.
In a time when so many of us are seeking what power might emerge from grief, Night Teacher’s music thrives inside that question, that ‘fierce tug of war’ between hope and hopelessness, and in the process creates a music that offers its own kind of education: exploring what beauty may be drawn from shadow, and what melodies might be sung only after it doesn’t all work out.
In February 2023 the group released their latest EP Dear Ellen and are currently working on their second full-length album. You can stay tuned to Night Teacher on Spotify, Bandcamp and iTunes, follow them on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and join their mailing list here.
