Credit: Sherwin LainezRight out of the gate with their video for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," Panic! at the Disco has always had a strong visual style. That tradition continues with the band's video for their song "LA Devotee," which stars frontman Brendon Urie as cult leader that's claimed Stranger Things actor Noah Schnapp as an unwilling member.
As for how Schnapp, who plays Will Byers on the hit Netflix series, got involved, that might be the strangest thing of all.
"[The director and I] had only just been in talks and discussions about what it would be about, we mentioned a cult and a couple different things," Urie tells ABC Radio. "And then Noah literally the next day emailed us, and his team was just like, 'Hey, I'm a fan of Panic! If you guys have anything coming up it'd be really cool to do something.' So it was just serendipitous and it just worked out, and that was the coolest thing ever."
Urie says he gets "bored really easily," which leads him to think of new ideas for videos.
"I love pushing that visual aspect, things that I haven't tried before," Urie explains. "Whether they end up great or terrible, it's so cool to try just random stuff like CGI and figure out how to shoot it this way and use this idea."
The actual meaning of "LA Devotee," a song from the new Panic! album Death of a Bachelor, isn't exactly reflected in the video, which Urie wrote as an ode to Los Angeles.
"The way that L.A. is looked at from an objective point of view, I think a lot of times from outsiders, it seems like one thing, but that wasn't the L.A. that I knew, and that's what I wanted to sing about," he says.
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