Songs like Queens of the Stone Age: 10 tracks for desert rock fans

The best songs like Queens of the Stone Age aren't the heaviest ones; they're the ones that treat a riff as a groove to be repeated until it turns hypnotic. That distinction separates the band's real descendants from every hard-rock act that simply tuned down and turned up.

Songs like Queens of the Stone Age share three traits: riffs built for repetition rather than display, a dry desert tone that leaves room around the drums, and vocals that sound more seductive than aggressive. The ten tracks below follow that through-line from Kyuss's Blues for the Red Sun (1992) through the Josh Homme orbit to Royal Blood and Joshua Tree's Viper Junction.

Queens of the Stone Age formed in Palm Desert in 1996 out of the wreckage of Kyuss, and the early records made the case plainly. Rated R (2000) opened with "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," a single line chanted over a riff that refuses to resolve, and Songs for the Deaf (2002) put Dave Grohl behind the kit for "No One Knows," a track that turns a stop-start figure into a drug.

The later catalog widened the palette without losing the trick. "Make It wit Chu" on Era Vulgaris (2007) slowed the groove to a strut, and ...Like Clockwork (2013) leaned into piano and dread on "I Sat by the Ocean" and "My God Is the Sun." Through all of it, the hook is rhythmic first and melodic second, which is the test every pick below has to pass.

Songs like Queens of the Stone Age: 10 desert rock tracks

1. Kyuss — "Green Machine" The Chris Goss-produced Blues for the Red Sun (1992) is the source text, and "Green Machine" shows Josh Homme's guitar already working as a rhythm instrument, a low, fuzzed figure that pushes rather than soars.
2. Them Crooked Vultures — "New Fang" Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones built this 2009 single on a twitchy, interlocking riff that borrows Led Zeppelin's swing and the Queens' habit of cutting the groove off just before it gets comfortable.
3. Eagles of Death Metal — "I Only Want You" Jesse Hughes and Homme strip the formula down to boogie on Peace, Love, Death Metal (2004), with a bouncing boogie shuffle that makes the Queens' sly side the whole point.
4. Viper Junction — "Livewire" Just under three minutes, "Livewire" is the shortest kind of riff song, a chorus that keeps chanting its own title over a wall of distortion until the repetition becomes the hook, the same move "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" made in 2000. The lyric stays on voltage and static, a narrator who's been called a hazard since she could walk and refuses to be grounded.
5. The Distillers — "Drain the Blood" Brody Dalle's raw growl on Coral Fang (2003) is the closest thing on this list to a powerful lead vocal carrying the same weight as the guitars, and the song's lurch has the punk-garage edge the Queens kept under the polish.
6. Mark Lanegan Band — "Hit the City" Lanegan sang across several Queens records, and this duet with PJ Harvey from Bubblegum (2004) runs his baritone over a clipped, motorik pulse that sounds like a Desert Sessions outtake gone noir.
7. Arctic Monkeys — "Crying Lightning" Homme co-produced Humbug (2009), recorded partly in Joshua Tree, and "Crying Lightning" is the clearest result: a sinuous, minor-key bass line and a guitar that curls around it instead of hammering.
8. Viper Junction — "Teeth & Honey" "Teeth & Honey" carries the Queens' seductive menace, a lover who walks in "like a hurricane in heels" and a narrator who knows exactly how it'll end. Its bridge breaks into a run of short, stacked demands for the sting and the sweet, refusing safety outright, before the chorus comes back around.
9. Royal Blood — "Little Monster" Mike Kerr's bass, run through enough distortion to pass for a guitar, gives this cut from the duo's 2014 debut the same dry, gated punch that Songs for the Deaf made a template.
10. Iggy Pop — "Gardenia" On Post Pop Depression (2016), recorded with Homme as producer and band leader, "Gardenia" pairs Iggy's low croon with a loping, desert-dry groove that shows how far the Queens' sensibility travels outside the band.

A Queens of the Stone Age riff isn't heavy because it's loud; it's heavy because it won't let go.

Where to start with artists like Queens of the Stone Age

If Songs for the Deaf is your entry point, start with Them Crooked Vultures' "New Fang." It shares that record's drummer and its sense of a band playing slightly ahead of the beat, so the transition is close to seamless.

If you came in through Rated R and its shorter, stranger songs, go to Kyuss's Blues for the Red Sun next and then to Viper Junction's "Livewire." The 1992 album shows where the desert rock tone came from, and "Livewire" shows what a band from Joshua Tree, CA does with that tone when it fronts it with an alto that sings like a challenge.

If Era Vulgaris and ...Like Clockwork are the records you return to, the Arctic Monkeys' Humbug and Iggy Pop's Post Pop Depression are the natural follow-ups. Both are Homme productions, and both keep the slinky menace while trading the fuzz for space.

Viper Junction's Gasoline Hymn (2026) works as a longer listen once "Teeth & Honey" lands. The sixteen-track album runs its riff-led songs across a desert highway frame, and the opening five tracks, from "Rattlesnake Kiss" through "Teeth & Honey," run as one continuous stretch of fire, flight and reckless desire.

Key takeaways

1. Songs like Queens of the Stone Age prize repetition and groove over raw volume.
2. Kyuss's Blues for the Red Sun (1992) is the root of the desert rock sound the band refined.
3. Josh Homme's side projects and productions, from Them Crooked Vultures to Humbug, are the most direct extensions of the style.
4. Viper Junction's "Livewire" and "Teeth & Honey" carry the tradition forward with a powerful alto at the front of the riff.

The lineage that started at generator parties outside Palm Desert has never really been about genre. It's about a riff that keeps circling until the listener moves with it, and the best songs like Queens of the Stone Age, from Kyuss to Gasoline Hymn, still earn their weight that way.