Deep Sea Diver lead singer and guitarist Jessica Dobson played with The Shins and Beck before focusing on Deep Sea Diver, playing in Bend on Wednesday.

Like just about every other band scheduled to release music in the early part of 2020, Deep Sea Diver first pushed their third album, “Impossible Weight,” back to the fall. Then the fall rolled around and the delta variant of COVID-19 came to America, forcing the Seattle band to make some tough decisions.

“We had so many different ideas. ‘Is this just a Bandcamp digital release? What is this thing?’” said guitarist and lead vocalist Jessica Dobson.

“And then finally, we just felt like it was meant to be a 2020 record. And I’m so glad we did it. It felt right. It was counterintuitive, but our fans were really there for it.”

That goes for more than just the band’s fans, it would seem. At the end of that year, listeners to Seattle’s influential public radio station, KEXP, voted “Impossible Weight” the best album of 2020, ahead of big names like Fiona Apple, Run the Jewels and Fleet Foxes. And its first single — the title track, which features vocals by Sharon Van Etten — spent 13 weeks on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart.

It’s not hard to hear why people connected with “Impossible Weight.” It’s packed with 10 tracks of punchy, impassioned indie rock, as were Deep Sea Diver’s first two albums. This time around, though, Dobson’s lyrics are much more personal, vulnerable and raw, which she ties directly back to her volunteer work with Aurora Commons, a drop-in center for unhoused people in Seattle.

“When you’re that interconnected with such despair and hope and joy and all these huge emotions, it stirred up something inside of me … that just allowed me to be more honest with myself and to envision bigger and better things, too,” said Dobson, who spent time playing guitar for Beck and The Shins before she decided to focus on Deep Sea Diver.

“It’s just vulnerability,” she continued. “I had to be vulnerable showing up (to Aurora Commons), and I had to be vulnerable showing up as a co-producer (on this album). But then there’s also a strength in the record that just (comes from) stepping into who I am and who the band was, and from ownership. Like, ‘Yeah, we’re doing this and we’re doing it at 200%.’”

More than a year later, that attitude is paying off as Deep Sea Diver tours behind “Impossible Weight” and gets a chance to actually see and hear the people who’ve come to the band as a result of the album. They’ve helped carry the band to new heights, Dobson said.

“We had a following, but we always felt like there were a lot of gatekeepers (or) that we were hitting a glass ceiling or something like that,” she said. “We’re not the biggest band in the world, but we’ve been able to actually push through a lot of those things with the help of a lot of people. An element of that was having a record that connected, and I am very grateful for that.”

What: Deep Sea Diver, with Natalie Schepman

When: 9 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Volcanic Theatre Pub, 70 SW Century Drive, Bend

Cost: $15

Contact: volcanictheatrepub.com