Pre-save ‘Year of the Snake’— out Oct 31st!

Watch the Past Life music video.

“Maybe the person you currently are can’t survive something,” says Lilly Bechtel. “But a new person could. So, you become that person.” 

Bechtel, the songwriter and vocalist behind the indie recording project Night Teacher, is speaking from personal experience. The title of her sophomore record Year of the Snake refers to the Chinese Zodiac of 2025—a time for transformation, and the album is a glowing invitation to grow, an illumination of the animal motivations that compel us forward, and a reminder to hold space for the process. 

Be a better human / not to lose it / I'm about to do it, Bechtel sings on the opening track “Never Better.” The song seeks balance between making healthy self-improvements and treating oneself like a perpetual renovation project—a tricky equilibrium Bechtel has made her life’s work. She is a trauma-informed teacher—of yoga, breathwork, meditation, and poetry—and over the past decade she has lead creative mindfulness workshops in women's correctional facilities, veterans hospitals, rehabs, nursing homes, and Kindergarten classrooms.  

Bechtel works with producer and collaborator Matt Wyatt to create the music of Night Teacher—a gritty, propulsive, and off-kilter sonic world with comparisons spanning Margaret Glaspy, Thom Yorke, Cate Le Bon. Their debut album Night Teacher arrived in 2020. Bechtel wrote the forthcoming follow-up during a phase of notable personal hardship—family challenges, a breakup, a relapse after twelve years of sobriety, all intensified by the isolation of Covid. “I kept asking myself, ‘Can I survive this?’”  

The songs of Night Teacher arrive like notes slipped under the door or winks across the table, little hints of solidarity that acknowledge a struggle, without demanding explanation or solution. “Healing doesn’t have to be linear,” says Bechtel. “It’s usually not.” The moniker nods to her preferred professional setting—evening hours, dim light, cushions on floors—but more poignantly, to the nature of the lesson. Trauma hides inside us, under the dark covers of confusion, distraction, discomfort. But as Bechtel puts it, “Pain can be a teacher. It can have some really important things to tell you—if you’re willing to listen.”

-Maddie Corbin, First City Artists

Year of the Snake will be released on October 31st and you can pre-save it here!

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