New York electro-rock trio Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum might be a new name (and what a name, more of which later) but they do feature a familiar face as their frontman. You may recognise Michael C Hall from his acting roles in Six Feet Under and Dexter but he's been singing all his life, arguably learning from the best when he played the eponymous lead in David Bowie's swansong musical Lazarus.

Hall describes working with Bowie around the time of his final album Blackstar as 'a highlight of not just my career but my life. It was incredibly invigorating and humbling to be part of the final flourish of his creative life. It was a heady time, and it all turned out in hindsight to be a part of the most badass mic-drop in the history of the world.'

Hall met his bandmates, Matt Katz-Bohen (keyboards) and Peter Yanowitz (drums) through their collective involvement in another stage musical: the glam-punk riot that is Hedwig And The Angry Inch. Unsurprisingly, there's a certain strut to the music they now produce together. 'I don't know that we ever really thought "let's do something theatrical",' says Hall. 'I guess it's just how we carry ourselves and maybe we do wear a little bit of face paint, but I don't think of the work I do in the band as an acting assignment. I don't have some sort of backstory for the character or anything like that. It's me.'

There is, however, a degree of conceptualisation around the outfit with each member adopting superhero-style nicknames: Hall is Kaleidoscope, Yanowitz doubles as Dream Weaver and Katz-Bohen takes the moniker of Storm Eye. 'When you are in a band, it's sort of like being in a street gang,' says Yanowitz. 'Giving each other these ridiculous names was liberating in a sense because inherently I'm a shy person, and when you have this nickname it allows you to step outside of yourself.'

And on the subject of names, the mouthful that is Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum was chosen by Katz-Bohen's daughter. 'Even though it's a pain-in-the-ass long name that a lot of people told us not to use, and I mean a lot of people, it felt like our music somehow,' says Yanowitz. 'When we were writing, we would ask ourselves "does that sound like it belongs in the museum?" Sometimes it wouldn't so we'd need to make a new wing in the museum.'

'But,' adds Katz-Bohen, 'we also shorten it to Princess Goes.'

Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum are on tour Saturday 27 November–Thursday 9 December; the band's debut album Thanks For Coming is out now on Rough Trade.