Princess Nostalgia, AKA Lili Traviato, is a rising electropop-star and real life one-man-band.
A self-taught writer, producer, director and visual artist, Traviato is a modern Renaissance woman, but is learning that the key to seizing control of her destiny may lie in what she asks for help with.
On princessnostalgia.com, Traviato recently announced a collaboration with Dave Hillis, arguably best known for his sound engineering on Pearl Jam’s “Ten” and his residency at Seattle’s London Bridge Studios during the grunge era, according to his website.
When I spoke to Traviato she was sitting in her childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, sporting her signature slicked middle part and deep red lip.
Traviato was born in Rome, Italy to a visual artist and a touring musician, who she said influenced her musical and visual tastes and helped nurse her creativity.
Traviato began releasing music under the moniker Princess Nostalgia in 2016, with her first EP “Practically Civilized,” which preceded a 2017 self-titled album Traviato released as an underclassman at the University of Vermont.
Traviato’s burning funk music spread like a virus around Burlington, Vermont during her tenure at the University, and her dynamic performances at local venues stood out against a student music-scene dominated by punky garage rock, yet Traviato was continuously underestimated, she said.
“For the first five years of my career in Vermont, it was all about proving how much I could do without anybody’s help,” Traviato said. “Especially because I hadn’t really proven myself yet. And there were a lot of men in the industry talking down to me, assuming that I didn’t know things. I had this big chip on my shoulder.”
Traviato said these experiences created a hyper-independent production process, and although she’s developed her skills and built a career on her own terms, evolving will require collaboration.
“I started realizing if I keep going down this path, not asking for help. I’m just going to be limiting myself,” she said. “If I want this to go anywhere, I need to invest in myself. And that means hiring other artists who I respect, especially other women artists. Karmically speaking, I can’t expect people to want to pay me for my work if I’m not willing to pay it forward.”
Writing and arranging songs is where Traviato’s heart lies and production elements like sound engineering, camera direction and even visual arts can be more easily delegated, she said.
Don’t mistake Traviato’s desire to expand her process as a surrender – she is ready to direct.
Traviato and Hillis will recreate Princess Nostalgia’s “Lost and Found,” the bouncy opening track from her eponymous album. They remixed the song on a vintage neve which belonged to George Harrison, Traviato said in an email to GRLMag. The music video will also be reshot.
Traviato’s firm grasp on her creative control yields a masterful cohesion throughout her music and branding, playfully plucking thematic elements from the likes of funk, pop, rock and electronic music and cooking them down to a distinct Princess Nostalgia sound.
Traviato’s brain is akin to the nebulous realm of inspiration from which she hails: “the land of good groove,” according to her website. It is a place where anyone is welcome – unless you’re boring.
Princess Nostalgia’s official playlist “Download, Filter, Upload, Repeat,” chronicles Traviato’s diverse influences, from D’Angelo to Gary Numan to Herbie Hancock and Johnny Cash. Kraftwerk, a German band which pioneered electronic music in the 1970s, loomed particularly large in Traviato’s childhood, she said.
“I’m interested in music across any genre except stuff that doesn’t have a groove,” she said. “I’m just not really interested in anything that’s too mathy and too cerebral or too theoretical. If I can’t just intuitively feel grounded in it, physically, then I’m not really interested.”
Her most recent release, a 2021 cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” is the perfect example of Traviato’s ability to contort inspiration from any source and remake it in her own image.
“It all started when I listened to [NPR’s] Radio Lab series called ‘Dolly Parton’s America’ and I had never really appreciated her as a person before,” Traviato said. “Being someone who’s more attracted to funk, and electronic music. I was very excited to reimagine it. Especially because country music often gets written off as the worst genre of music.”
The track is a stripped down vocal performance where Traviato sings a lower, slower version of Parton’s country classic. Soft percussion and a noisy bass emulate Traviato’s haunting vocals and are paced by spacey interludes.
“Something about it being so different from what I do made it more creative. It’s compelling to try to cover instead of something that’s already like, within my ballpark,” Traviato said.
The video for Princess Nostalgia’s version, directed and produced by Traviato, takes on a new angle. Two plotlines progress in harmony: one where Princess Nostalgia is envious of Jolene, and another where she is attracted to Jolene.
“Dolly Parton denies that that was what she was expressing but I thought it would be interesting to depict that angle,” Traviato said.
While Traviato draws from a deep well of influences, she is dedicated to creating a thoughtful, original sound, distinct from the familiar or mechanical methods of pop music production.
On her website, an image of Traviato in a pink wig reads “There’s a lot of shitty pop music, especially these days. Making a good pop song is difficult and an art form.”
“I think the thing about pop music that people don’t respect is how simple it is. So it makes it look like it’s easy to do because it’s just like it’s stuck in your head,” she said. “It feels so natural that it doesn’t have that same obvious artistic genius or whatever that you might sense in like, jazz or like, other genres. They’re just more in your face about how hard it is to do what they’re doing.”
In addition to Traviato’s upcoming projects with Hillis, she is studying film scoring and designing a music production course as a resource for femmes, she said.
“I’m kind of trying to put my eggs in as many baskets as possible to kind of ensure that I’ll be able to build a lasting career off of the knowledge I’ve built in this industry,” Traviato said.
Princess Nostalgia’s music is available to stream on all platforms. Learn more at princessnostalgia.com