Kevin Bronson on September 14th, 2016

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Late in Deep Sea Diver’s searing set on Sunday night at the Bootleg Theater, frontwoman Jessica Dobson clambered atop a 3-foot box illuminating the band’s iconography from the new album “Secrets.” There, she shredded for a few moments, but on her dismount she knocked over a bottle of water, dousing the stage.

The momentary delay was the only hiccup in the Seattle quartet’s hour-long display of musical muscle and virtuosity. It made for a triumphant homecoming show for Dobson, an Orange County native who fretted that her parents had to stay up so late on a Sunday night, as opposed to the two Southern California shows earlier this year when Deep Sea Diver played earlier, supporting sets.

||| Photos by Jessica Hanley

The 11 o’clock hour on a Sunday has seldom been so riveting. “Secrets,” Deep Sea Diver’s sophomore full-length, is an album of enormous complexities, undulations and spasms — an indie-rock Dagwood of alternately arresting and tender parts good to the last bite. In a voice that ranges from a shout to a bellow to a coo, Dobson reads “Secrets” like a motivational speech. Only in flashes do you get the sense the pep talks might be as much for her as you.

The follow-up to 2012’s “History Speaks” and the 2014 EP “Always Waiting,” the album should be in the conversation for Best of 2016. (Curiously, the mighty Pitchfork has ignored Deep Sea Diver — maybe because they are so fiercely DIY and have no hip label/brand behind them? — but Consequence of Sound thought so much of “Secrets” that the site solicited some pretty astute musicians to author track-by-track-track reviews.)

Dobson, who was signed as a teenage prodigy to an ill-fated major-label deal and went on to pay her dues as a touring player for Beck, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Shins, comes off as equal parts PJ Harvey, Chrissy Hynde and Annie Clark, and at this point in Deep Sea Diver’s tour, she and bassist Garrett Gue, guitarist Elliot Jackson, and drummer Peter Mansen are a well-oiled machine.

She began Sunday’s show behind the keyboard for “Creatures of Comfort,” was at her most playful during the almost-subversive “See These Eyes” and rampaged through every glorious riff on the album’s title track, which at 6 minutes is not long enough. The quartet played a handful of songs from “History Speaks,” including the galloping “You Go Running,” and tacked on a one-song encore, a cover of Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” transformed into an indie-rock banger.

L.A. quartet Gothic Tropic preceded the headliners with a crisp set of tunes from their forthcoming full-length “Fast or Feast,” out in late October. And Long Beach’s Wargirl impressed with an opening set of dance/garage/afrobeat.

||| Stream: Deep Sea Diver’s “Secrets”