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Music

Donovan Wolfington’s Trippy New Music Video Is Actually Two Trippy Videos in One

Filmed at the same mental hospital where 'Shutter Island' was shot, the epic double-video will mess with your brain.

Photo by Julia Leiby

Donovan Wolfington’s new video is actually two videos in one, spanning their songs “Mercurus” and “HxC Punk.” The result flexes not only some of the prettiest coloring in any video, but some of the trippiest storytelling. And it all started on Twitter.

"Michael Parks Randa, who directed the video, hit us up on Twitter in January," says frontman Neil Berthier. "He had almost all the details fleshed out, down to actors and location. He's from Boston and had access to the mental hospital where Shutter Island was shot, as well as a lot of the outfits from that movie."

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Combining two songs that are consecutive on the album feels natural, but the story doesn’t tell two separate stories so much as it tells two parts to one. "Even though those songs are right after each other on the record, I never pair them together," Berthier says. "When Mike came with that concept, it didn't make sense, but then he had a vision with those two so we figured it would be interesting to see how it played out. The end result definitely works and we're stoked about how it came out."

That end result is almost a novel unto itself: "Mercurus" opens with a bearded man running for his life from a town of pig-masked people before they catch him. The latter half, "HxC Punk," takes an even darker twist, bringing the story to a warped reality with a Lynchian twist you'll have to see for yourself.

Donovan Wolfington is on tour soon with Caddywhompus. Dates below.

September 1 - New Orleans, LA @ Poor Boys
September 3 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
September 4 - Columbia, SC @ TBA
September 5 - Wilmington, NC - Gravity Records
September 6 - Richmond, VA @ Gallery 5
September 8 - Washington, DC @ Lily trotter tea lounge
September 9 - Philadelphia, PA @ TBA
September 16 - Brighton, UK - Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
September 17 - Southampton, UK - The Joiners (matinee)
September 17 - Bristol, UK - Old England (evening)
September 18 – Manchester, UK – Fallow Cafe
September 19 – Dundee, UK - Conroy’s Basement
September 20 – Glasgow, UK - 13th Note
September 21 – Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club
September 22 – Cardiff, UK - Clwb Ifor Bach
September 23 – Nottingham, UK - JT Soar
September 24 – London, UK – DIY Space For London
September 25 – Paris, FR - Le Klub
September 26 – Leuven, Belgium - Vleugel F
September 28 – Oslo, NOR - Cafe Mir
September 29 – Stockholm, SWE - Kulturhuset Lava
October 2 – Darmstadt, GER - Oetinger Villa
October 3 – London, UK - The Old Blue Last
October 5 - Brooklyn, NY - Shea Stadium*
October 6 - Hamden, CT - The Space
October 7 - Boston, MA - The Middle East*
October 10 - Detroit, MI - 2144 Bagley Street
October 11 - Chicago, IL - SubT Downstairs

* - with Ovlov and Caddywhompus