Early in Built to Spill’s career, frontman and guitarist Doug Martsch planned to change the band’s lineup with every album (and came pretty close to doing so).

In the early 2010s, the Boise, Idaho, band settled into a quintet featuring a three-pronged guitar attack led by Martsch, longtime collaborators Jim Roth and Brett Netson, but following the band’s most recent album, 2015’s “Untethered Moon,” Martsch streamlined the lineup to a trio. He’s toured with bassist Jason Albertini and drummer Steve Gere since, including a raw, stripped-down show at the Domino Room in 2016. The band will return to the venue Friday for another go, this time as an indie act in the truest sense of the word — the band left longtime label Warner Bros. last year.

Built to Spill, with Prism Bitch: 8 p.m. Friday; $20 plus fees in advance; ages 21 and older; Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend; redlightpro.com, eventbrite.com or 541-408-4329.

Q: How did this three-piece lineup of Built to Spill come about?

A: It’s just the band doesn’t make enough money to support five or at the time six people, because our sound guy is also an equal member of the band. There’s just not enough money to have that many people in the band. No, those guys (Netson and Roth) are great; I would love to be playing with them.

Q: Did they understand the decision?

A: I don’t know. Yeah, I have no idea. I hope so, but who knows?

Q: Was there anything specifically that you were really worried about playing, or anything specifically that you haven’t tried with the three-piece lineup?

A: There’s only a few things. At first, we were pretty conservative and just did songs that lended themselves to the three-piece, maybe things that were written as a three-piece. And then as time went on, we tried some other ones and — I don’t know, it’s the challenge of trying to do them and then finding that they could still sound cool as a three-piece.

Q: Are you working toward another album?

A: Yeah, we’ve been working on songs for a long time. Most of these songs are old — a few of them we recorded when we did the last record, and a lot of them we wrote right away (after), and then we just got sidetracked by other things we were all doing.

Q: There was a six-year stretch between “Untethered Moon” and the previous album (2009’s “There Is No Enemy”), and you mentioned getting sidetracked while working on new material. Is it hard to come back with a new release after long periods away, considering how fast the music industry moves?

A: This is the only thing I know how to do, so I don’t know what else I would do besides put out another record. And I don’t know — I mean, ideally, I don’t think we’d want to put out too much more stuff. Maybe every three years instead of every six years, or every four years or something. But the world doesn’t really need too much more of our stuff. There’s a lot of it already out there, and there’s so much music already.

Q: But as you say, this is what you do.

A: Yeah, that’s true. Perhaps if I pump some stuff out, I would make some money off of it. I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. But stuff just takes a while, too.

— Brian McElhiney, The Bulletin