Ugh: Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando, 58, sent a fan unwanted videos of himself masturbating
We write about Scientology news here at the Underground Bunker, but in this case we were approached by a longtime, very active reader who asked if we could help with a different kind of problem.
Our reader said that his wife was dealing with being sent unsolicited, unwanted videos from Evan Dando, the founder and frontman of 90s alternative-rock mainstays The Lemonheads, and those videos depict him masturbating. They were both grossed out by it, angry, and weren’t sure what to do about it.
We asked them to tell us what happened.
Our reader’s wife — we’ll call her Dawn — said that she had followed Dando at his Twitter/X account for years. The musician, now 58, lives in São Paolo, Brazil with his second wife, filmmaker Antonia Teixeira and her three children, and he tweets about music and art.
He also looks back at his career, as when he recently posted this NME cover from Christmas week 1993 that featured a cross-dressing Dando with Björk.
“We tweeted back and forth in the past. Usually about art. One time it was about Edward Gorey,” Dawn says.
Those exchanges were years ago, and she believes they were public, although she says they may have used direct messages at one point.
In October, The Lemonheads released a new album, Love Chant, and Dawn sent Dando a DM congratulating him, saying the new record was fantastic. She didn’t get a reply, which didn’t bother her.
Then, this past Thursday evening, she checked her account and found that she had a DM from Dando that had been sent the day before.
“Cool I’m sorry I’m an exhibitionist” it said.
Unsure what to make of it, Dawn looked at Dando’s public feed and didn’t see anything “exhibitionist” other than the usual tweets about music and art.
So she responded, “Don’t ever apologize for being you, my friend. Always be unapologetic. And you.” And she included a heart emoji.
She then screenshotted his message, and put it on her Threads account to show friends that she was getting something so unusual from a famous person. Then she went to bed.
“I woke up at 5 am on Saturday morning. I got my coffee. And I saw that I had some messages on Twitter,” she says.
There were several from Dando, and one of them was a video. Thinking that Dando had sent her some music, she opened the video before even reading the other messages.
And what was on it?
“It’s him sitting in a basement or something, and he’s fully masturbating. You can see his penis, and his face. It’s definitely him. He’s filming it from a weird angle.”
Once she realized what it was, she shut it off. Then she went to look at the messages, which Dando had sent before the video.
The first read, “Would it be cool if I sent you an ‘art’ photo?” And the second message, three minutes later, “Can I send you a photo?”
“I put the phone down and just sat there and waited for [my husband] to wake up. I wasn’t sure how to process it,” Dawn said.
Then she talked to her husband when he awoke. Are you sure it’s Dando’s account, he asked? Yes, she said, and she showed him how the account, “@Evan_Dando,” is the same one he’s used for years.
On Wednesday, February 4, the same day he sent Dawn the first message, Dando posted this image of himself at his account, wearing the same “SVERIGE” (Sweden) T-shirt he’s wearing in the masturbation video.
Here’s a still from a video that Dando posted in March 2025, with him wading in a Brazilian stream, so you can see how he looks these days and that it does match the person in the video…
Dawn’s husband screen-recorded the video and messages, and suggested that she call police. She wanted to wait and process it a bit more first. Also, they weren’t sure how to report someone in Brazil.
“Nothing happened the rest of Saturday,” she said. “I was waiting, and I thought he might apologize because I hadn’t responded.”
Sunday afternoon, she looked at her account again, and saw that Dando had messaged her again. This time, he had sent a photo of himself in what appears to be a dress. And then another video. It was very much like the first.
“It’s him masturbating again. Same place. Same shirt. But a different video.”
In this one, he’s got what looks like a joint in his mouth.
After that video, Dando sent a message: “Ok sorry thanks I just need an outlet Cheers”
“I’ve never felt anger like that,” Dawn said. “Don’t call me an outlet, that’s gross.”
Dawn said she felt embarrassed and anxious about it. She sent TMZ a message on their tip line, but didn’t get a response.
She then described what happened on her Threads account, and got a deluge of responses from friends denouncing Dando.
Later on Sunday evening, when Dawn and her husband went to screen-record the second video, they realized that Dando had taken down his X account entirely. (They did manage to record the second video, and sent both videos to us.)
Dando’s X account was still down Tuesday evening as we sent emails to his manager Kevin Fitzgerald at Toura Toura Ltd in England, and his publicists Ken Weinstein and Fia Kaminski at Big Hassle in New York asking for comment about Dando’s behavior.
We heard nothing back, and then Dando put his X account back up yesterday morning, so we sent him a DM asking for comment as well. He hasn’t responded. He did begin following us at our X account yesterday afternoon.
Dando has been very open about his drug abuse and mental health issues over the years. In interviews for the new album this past October, he claimed that he was now “sober” because he was no longer using heroin. Is this what “sober” looks like for Evan Dando?
“It’s so gross,” Dawn said about the experience, and she wanted to get word out about it. “I don’t want him to do this to anyone else. It’s just a gross feeling.”
Bijou Phillips hospitalized, asks for help finding a new kidney
Actress Bijou Phillips asked the public for help at her Instagram account yesterday, revealing that she’s been hospitalized and is on dialysis as she needs a new kidney.
Born with underdeveloped kidneys, she received a transplant in 2017 with a kidney from close friend Chris Wadhams, which she says gave her eight more good years with her daughter Fianna, but she’s had numerous complications since then, including the BK virus, which can compromise transplants.
When Bijou was accompanying her then-husband Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson at his two criminal trials in 2022 and 2023, Wadhams was always the tallest person in the courtroom.
Bijou shared a link to a living donor form where people can begin to see if they qualify as a donor to help her out.
(We’re also going to point out the link between our two stories today, because if we don’t certainly some of our readers will: Bijou claimed that she lost her virginity at 15 to Evan Dando when he was 27 or 28, for what it’s worth.)
Well, we’ve said it before: We sat very close to Bijou during every day of those two trials, and over that time she made some pretty interesting faces at us. We hope she comes through this crisis, and we’re still interested in talking to her about what she went through during those trials.
Mark your calendars
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WTF did I just read? UGH!
Hang in there Dawn. No one deserves that and hopefully you won't hear from him again.