Magnet Magazine: “Night Teacher’s unabashed sincerity hits like a blast of fresh air from an open car window.”
“The song is about the experience of falling in love and the way tenderness and hope can also bring a fresh awareness of all there is to lose,” says Bechtel. “It’s about trying to open your heart again—and being scared that you won’t be able to.“ “It’s about the inherent connection we have to each other and how fragile the whole arrangement is,” says Bechtel. “And the way love seems to make that reality more vivid, terrifying and precious.” -Magnet Magazine, Oct 9th, 2025. Read the full article here.
Various Small Flames: “Night Teacher sits somewhere between indie rock, chamber pop and doom folk in its style, a sound tied together by Bechtel’s emotive, often haunting delivery.”
Ahead of new album Year of the Snake, coming this autumn via First City Artists, Night Teacher has shared new single ‘New Cage’. “I was reading Naomi Klein’s brilliant book Doppelgänger, where she writes about the original surveillance system as the concept of God, which in many ways has been replaced by the concept of the idealized self,” Bechtel explains. “Social media may be doing a very old thing in a new way: getting people to run surveillance on themselves in order to become better commodities for the marketplace.” - Sept 9th, 2025. Read the full track listing here.
The Wild Is Calling: “Night Teacher has a mystical essence. Their writing is elusive while their singer has a rare exotic touch. We love it.”
“Night Teacher lands hypnotic on their recent single New Cage. They honor their tantric rock essence with a fabulous companion video. Together it’s an enchanting indie rock vibe aesthetic.” -Sept 9th, 2025. Read the full track listing here.
Atwood Magazine: “Night Teacher premieres a spellbinding reckoning with home, identity, and transformation”
"Night Teacher's “Past Life” is a warm, gritty fever dream of heartbreak, transience, and self-discovery – an aching inner reckoning off her upcoming sophomore album ‘Year of the Snake’ that blurs the lines between distance and intimacy, past and present" -Atwood Magazine, August 12th, 2025. Read the full article here.
Voxwave Magazine: “at the intersection of experimental doom-folk and electronic groove, where Lilly’s mesmerizing voice and piercing lyrics create a sense of depth and movement”
“Night Teacher’s new single, “Never Better,” is an honest, subtly ironic ballad about the inner race toward becoming a “better version” of oneself – a pursuit that’s easy to get lost in. “Never Better” is a portal into a visual and sonic world.” -July 15th, 2025. Read the full track listing here.
Northern Transmissions: “Night Teacher Announces New Album Year of the Snake”
“Night Teacher, has announced her new album Year of the Snake, will arrive on October 31 via First City Artists. Night Teacher is the project of songwriter and vocalist Lilly Bechtel and producer Matt Wyatt. The album’s title refers to the Chinese Zodiac of 2025—a time for transformation. The album is a glowing invitation to grow, an illumination of the animal motivations that compel us forward, and a reminder to hold grace and space for the process. Ahead of the album’s arrival, Night Teacher has shared the track “Never Better.”
In the past few years, I started noticing how often I would think or talk about myself like I was some kind of renovation project. I always had this list of things to do before I could consider myself fully improved or somehow finally ‘fixed.’ When I realized how much this wasn’t about circumstances as much as a part of my personality, it made me feel a little sad and a little free. Because it’s as serious as it is ridiculous—how much of my own life I can miss while I’m on my way to being somewhere, or someone, else.”
-Northern Transmissions, July 15th, 2025. Read the full piece here.
NPR: “Five Virginia Artists with a Halloween Treat: their Film Features a Cargo of Skulls and Bones”
by Sandy Hausman- listen to the full story here
In the early 90’s, a book called Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype appeared on the New York Times’ bestseller list for 145 weeks. The work of a psychotherapist who specializes in treating trauma, this intensely spiritual work featured a character named La Loba – she wolf -- who resurrects a wolf from its bones.
The book spoke deeply to singer Lilly Bechtel, who was inspired to write a song about La Loba.
“In the mountains she collects many animal bones, but her specialty is wolves, and once she has collected the bones she sings over them and conjures them back into life,” Bechtel explains.
Stuck at home during the pandemic, the Charlottesville musician re-read the book, collected a trove of animal skulls and bones from her local butcher, picked up four fellow artists and drove south in an RV. They stopped near Terralingua, Texas in a desert near the Mexican border to make a music video.
The eight-minute movie evokes the importance of intuition, the nature of grief and the human need for connection which was, Bechtel says, sorely lacking during the pandemic.
“In the early stages of the pandemic, a good friend of mine gave me a walkie talkie," Bechtel recalls. "We were walkie-talking each other from either side of this river because of social distancing, and actually that made it into the song. What it’s partly mimicking, I hope, is the sporadic and often un-nourishing mode of connection that technology can offer, and this is an extreme introvert speaking. Even I had more reverence for human connection and the relationships in my life.”
The film premieres Sunday, October 30th at Potter's Craft Cider in Charlottesville.
