Throughout the year, Atwood Magazine invites members of the music industry to participate in a series of essays reflecting on art, identity, culture, inclusion, and more.

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Today, Brooklyn-based indie rock band LAPÊCHE share a special personal essay on tension, intention, and the art of letting go as they introduce their third album, ‘Autotelic’ – a dynamic record rooted in presence and process, rather than resolution.

Formed in 2016, LAPÊCHE is a band in motion. Originally Krista Holly Diem’s solo project, the group has grown into a fully collaborative Brooklyn-based four-piece, with longtime members Dave Diem (bass) and Drew DeMaio (guitar), joined by drummer Colin Brooks (Samiam). Following 2017’s ‘The Second Arrow’ and 2021’s ‘Blood in the Water,’ the ten-track ‘Autotelic’ is named for the idea of doing something for its own sake – inviting listeners to feel more than they understand to sit with ache, motion, and becoming. Trading post-punk edges for gothic shimmer, shoegaze drift, and melodic minimalism, the record carries a quiet spiritual charge. Produced by Alex Newport (At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Death Cab for Cutie) and recorded in Joshua Tree, ‘Autotelic’ reflects the stillness and expanse of the desert.

Much of the album’s emotional clarity comes from lived experience: Krista and Dave, who are married and in long-term sobriety, bring a shared language of healing, honesty, and presence to their songwriting. That commitment shapes not only the lyrics, but the way the band creates together. Across ‘Autotelic,’ LAPÊCHE build a patient, expansive sonic world where restraint is as powerful as release. The arrangements breathe, favoring texture, repetition, and space over traditional crescendos. Guitars blur and shimmer, rhythms pulse with quiet insistence, and melodies arrive like mantras rather than hooks, rewarding deep listening and inviting listeners to remain present inside the sound.

LAPÊCHE continue to carve space for emotional complexity in indie rock with their most focused and unflinching release to date.

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AUTOTELIC

Holding On, Letting Go, and Making a Record in Public

by LAPêCHE

We named this album Autotelic because we were trying to describe a way of being, not a declaration of purity.

“Autotelic” means doing something for its own sake. Process over outcome. Presence over payoff. It is a beautiful idea, and also a complicated one, especially when you are releasing a record into the world and very much hoping people will hear it.

There is irony there that we did not try to resolve. We leaned into it.

This album exists because we needed to make it. It is also being released because we want it to travel. We want it in people’s headphones on long walks, in kitchens and bedrooms at night. We want it to reach the people who need it, not to fix anything, but to be felt alongside anger, hope, grief, and loneliness, as life actually is. Those two truths live side by side, sometimes comfortably, sometimes not.

Making Autotelic taught us how to stay inside that tension without collapsing into it.

When we started writing, we were not chasing momentum. We were chasing clarity. Many of these songs came from lived moments that could not be rushed. Sobriety. Marriage. Fertility struggles. Grief that arrived without warning. The work was slow, repetitive, and sometimes frustrating. That slowness became part of the meaning.

Writing twenty songs with Alex Newport, narrowing those down to ten for the album, and then refining and recording them in Joshua Tree reinforced that practice. The desert does not reward urgency. It asks you to listen longer than you want to. Alex never pushed the songs toward immediacy for the sake of efficiency. He trusted restraint. He trusted repetition. He let the songs reveal themselves at their own pace. That patience shaped both the sound and the spirit of the record.

At the same time, we were not pretending this album would live in isolation. We were aware that eventually it would be shared, written about, promoted, and measured. That awareness did not negate the Autotelic philosophy. It complicated it. And that complication felt honest.

There is a difference between attachment and intention. We can care deeply about where this music goes without demanding that it validate our worth. We can show up, do the work, send the emails, play the shows, and still release the outcome. That balance is not something you arrive at once. It is something you practice, step by step.

The songs reflect that push and pull. “Autotelic Nosebleed” is about motion without destination. Dancing without promising yourself transformation. Moving forward while letting go of the need to know what comes next. “Happy 4U” holds joy and grief in the same breath, wanting something deeply while learning how to live without it. “Double Knotted” is about staying grounded even when everything feels in motion.

Throughout the album, there is an acceptance that expansion and contraction are both necessary. Effort and surrender. Hope and release. The songs do not seek resolution because life rarely offers it cleanly.

Releasing this record has asked us to practice what it preaches. To care without clinging. To try without forcing. To share without demanding. To trust that doing something with honesty and intention is enough, even as we hope it reaches as many ears and hearts as possible.

That is the Autotelic paradox. You make the thing because you need to make it. You offer it because connection matters. And then you let it go.

This album is not a conclusion. It is a practice, one we are still learning how to live inside. – LAPêCHE

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:: connect with LAPêCHE here ::

:: stream/purchase Autotelic here ::

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