YACHT is a Band, Belief System, and Business conducted by Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans of Marfa, Texas and Portland, Oregon, USA. All people are welcome to become members of YACHT. Accordingly, YACHT is what YACHT is when YACHT is standing before you. YACHT was born in 2002 in Portland, Oregon, as a solo cross-disciplinary experiment for Jona Bechtolt, using technology to extend physical boundaries of communication, performance, and music. In 2008, after a shared mystical experience in the Far West Texas desert, Bechtolt was joined in the YACHT endeavor by longtime collaborator Claire L. Evans. Spurred by this paranormal bond, this new incarnation of YACHT wrote and recorded See Mystery Lights in Marfa, Texas.

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Currently, the Straight Gaze – Robert “Bobby Birdman” Kieswetter, Jeffrey “Jerusalem” Brodsky, and Katy Davidson of the Key Losers – round out the live presentation of YACHT. YACHT’s heart is in these live presentations: uncluttered, inspiring sessions of damaged dance moves and coded ritualism, backed by constantly changing elements—Power Point presentations, audience Q&A sessions, and shamanistic video environments. YACHT has toured with LCD Soundsystem (R.I.P.), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Architecture in Helsinki, and Vampire Weekend; YACHT is multidisciplinary enough to have been paired with the Chemical Brothers, the Breeders, and Phoenix; YACHT has played on boats, in caves, in bathrooms, in art galleries and museums, in rural China, and at the Hollywood Bowl.

Bechtolt has been a promiscuous genre-smasher since his adolescence, when he decided that playing drums in the touring punk band he formed with his older brother was more worthwhile than attending a single day of high school. He’s plied his unique breed of beat-heavy laptop wizardry and grunge ethos to endless collaborations, both as producer and drummer, with west coast mainstays like Devendra Banhart, The Blow, Little Wings, and Bobby Birdman. He’s also been recognized by such bigwigs as David Byrne, who name-dropped Bechtolt’s production on The Blow’s Paper Television in his Artforum Top 10 list, Paris’ Centre Georges Pompidou, where he was commissioned for a large-scale performance, and Vibe Magazine, who touted Bechtolt as ‘indie rock’s Timbaland’ in their review of YACHT’s I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real. (2007, Marriage Records)

Evans, whose vocals have been featured on previous YACHT recordings, joined the band full-time in 2008. She’s a science writer and artist and who came to music through the underground Los Angeles noise scene. She writes a popular blog called Universe, about the intersection of art and science, for the ScienceBlogs network. She has presented her earnestly cosmic PowerPoint performances at MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, spoken at the Rubin Museum of Art about extraterrestrial life, written a collaborative book on art and science at Carnegie Mellon University, made commissioned films for the World Science Festival and SEED Magazine, and has collaborated with Bechtolt on literally hundreds of projects since they met in 2004.