Death Cab for Cutie will return to Bend on Monday for its sixth show at Les Schwab Amphitheater.

Just about every touring band on the planet, of course, shut down operations and went home in the spring of 2020 in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

For Seattle-based indie-pop-rockers Death Cab for Cutie, lockdown came near the end of what was already a self-imposed break after a long stretch of touring behind their 2018 album “Thank You For Today,” and just as the band was gearing back up for a busy summer.

So for Dave Depper, Death Cab’s guitarist and a 1998 graduate of Bend’s Mountain View High School, the timing meant he had a head start on some of the more common hobbies people picked up during the pandemic.

“I’d already been baking bread and stuff like that,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Portland. “Once it became clear we weren’t going to be able to tour, I just doubled down on that kind of stuff.”

Death Cab for Cutie will return to Bend Monday for its sixth show at Les Schwab Amphitheater, where Depper first saw them live in 2004, about a dozen years before he joined the band. In anticipation of his return to his hometown, GO! Magazine caught up with Depper to find out what he did during the band’s time off because of COVID. Here’s a list of things that kept him busy:

Personal hobbies: “I got heavily into outdoor activities. I backpacked a bunch last year with my girlfriend. I learned to garden and totally transformed my front and back yards. I’m at least out of the bottom three yards on my block at this point.”

Depper also got back into an old hobby: running. He is now training for a marathon.

His new solo album, “Europa”: Earlier this year — under his own name – Depper released a wonderful collection of ambient guitar improvisations he’d recorded during a Death Cab’s 2015 European tour. “I’d been sitting on about 10 hours of music, so with time on my hands, I decided to finally sift through it and get into a format suitable for release. With all that was going on in the world at that time, it was a really soothing project to take on.”

A future solo album: Once “Europa” was done, Depper started chipping away at the proper follow-up to his 2017 synth-pop album “Emotional Freedom Technique,” which he had shelved when the pandemic hit. “I just totally lost interest in it. It felt like I was listening to stuff that had been made by somebody I didn’t relate to. It was just not the music for my headspace at that time.” He made some headway on the solo album, but soon, most of his time and attention was taken by …

A new Death Cab album: Depper is understandably hush-hush about this one, but, as he puts it, “We definitely have our eye on the next record right now.” Like most working people, the band spent much of 2020 collaborating remotely, writing and arranging songs via Zoom. “We ended up generating a lot of material, and it became a really fun thing to look forward to each week,” he said.

Death Cab’s “Georgia” EP: After the November election, with two Senate seats in Georgia heading to a runoff, the band recorded five songs by Georgia artists, including R.E.M, Cat Power and TLC. The project raised more than $100,000 for Fair Fight Action, a group that promotes fair elections across the country. “I got to Zoom with Stacey Abrams twice,” Depper said, “and that just made my year.”

Guitar improvement: Depper is a self-taught musician who can play just about anything. But he believes he “learned a lot of things incorrectly” and so he decided to break his guitar technique down to the basics and relearn how to play. “It was really fun to get back to band practice a couple months ago and realize that I’m way better than last time I was in a room with these guys,” he said. “It was like my own personal boot camp. It’s made my playing much more effortless and allowed me to concentrate on other things that matter, too.”

What: Death Cab for Cutie, with Deep Sea Dive

When: 7 p.m. Monday

Where: Les Schwab Amphitheater, 344 SW Shevlin Hixon Drive, Bend

Cost: $39.50, plus fees

Contact: bendconcerts.com