Michael C. Hall Plays Mind Games With His Bandmates in New ‘Nevertheless’ Video

Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum — the trio featuring Dexter’s Michael C. Hall, Peter Yanowitz (the Wallflowers), and Matt Katz-Bohen (Blondie) — have released a trippy new video for their song “Nevertheless.”

The clip was directed by cult filmmaker Dylan Greenberg and boasts an eye-popping, Eighties-style aesthetic. Hall appears as a disembodied head that tries to ensnare Katz-Bohen and Yanowitz with his mind control powers, and it’s up to the two musicians to make it out of this surreal maze.

“Nevertheless” appears on Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum’s recent album, Thanks for Coming, which was released in February. In an email, Hall tells IndieLand that he and Yanowitz crafted the skeleton of the song before sending it to Katz-Bohen to complete it. “He just took it to a place that I never even imagined,” Hall says. “It was a song that we put together pre-pandemic. It might sound kind of dystopian or pandemic-inspired, I guess there was plenty of dystopian inspiration available before the pandemic started.”

As for the video, Katz-Bohen says they’d already had Greenberg’s unique aesthetic in mind, and not only did the filmmaker agree to helm the “Nevertheless” video, but they came with a very specific treatment. “We shot for three full days, and on the last day we shot at Dylan’s apartment to get Matt and I entering the building and going up the elevator,” Yanowitz says. “And Dylan’s partner was baking sweet potatoes in the oven. I’m a real smell-oriented person and smells stay with me a lot longer than most other senses. And that smell of the baking sweet potato is ingrained in my brain and also I associate it with this song now, that’s how much the smell power is in my world. So now, whenever I hear this song, I just get that smell. I just thought I’d throw that in there.”

Along with releasing the “Nevertheless” video, Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum announced a European tour that will kick off November 27th in Bristol, England, and wrap on December 16th at Cologne, Germany. Prior to the run, they’ll play a special gig at Mercury Lounge in New York City on October 30th.

The shows will mark Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum’s first live dates since March 12th, 2020, right before the pandemic brought live music to a halt. The European trek will also be their first proper tour.

“We have definitely established our live show, but we’re looking forward to further exploring it and bringing it to new audiences,” Hall says. “I think we’ve always at least hoped or imagined that our music would appeal to a European audience, so we’re going to test out that theory.”

“We’ve never been on the road as a band, so there’s that novelty of stringing together more than one show a month,” Yanowitz adds. “It will be like a feast of shows for us. Everything is kind of nerve-wracking and exciting so I’m really eager to see how it transforms our live show, what we learn from it and take to other places as well.”

Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum European Tour Dates

November 27 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla
November 28 – Nottingham, UK @ Rescue Rooms
November 29 – Manchester, UK @ Night & Day
November 30 – London, UK @ Bush Hall
December 2 – Bedford, UK @ Esquires
December 3 – Birmingham, UK @ The Castle & Falcon
December 4 – Swansea, UK @ Sin City
December 5 – Glasgow, UK @ Mono
December 7 – Belfast, UK @ Ulster Sports Club
December 8 – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club
December 9 – Liverpool, UK @ 24 Kitchen Street
December 11 – Kyiv, UKR @ Beletage
December 13 – Hamburg, GER @ Knust
December 14 – Berlin, GER @ Hole 44
December 15 – Munich, GER @ Backstage Halle
December 16 – Cologne, GER @ Kantine