The first taste we’ve gotten of the Mark Ronson-produced Queens of the Stone Age album, Villains (due Aug. 25), found the typically hard-charging rockers loosening their hips a bit on “The Way You Used to Do.” It was a surprising tangent for the group led by Josh Homme, who met Ronson when they worked together on Lady Gaga‘s “Perfect Illusion.”
But lest you think it’s going to be all uptown funking and booty shaking on Villains, the Queens came back hard on Tuesday (July 12) with another taste of the album that makes it clear they haven’t forgotten their desert rock roots. A teaser clip, dubbed “Here.We.Come.” has a dark, bouncy post-punk groove and a kind of spiky Arctic Monkeys vibe, which makes sense because Homme produced the Monkeys’ 2009 Humbug album and the Queens frontman has contributed to the English group’s past two efforts.
“You’re head’s like a haunted house,” Homme sings ominously over footage of the band rocking out on stage in a 70-second appetizer directed by Andreas Neumann, who co-directed American Valhalla with Homme, the recent documentary about the singer/guitarists collaboration with punk icon Iggy Pop.
Check it out: