Queens of the Stone Age

Formed from the embers of Kyuss in the late '90s, and hammered into life by frontman Josh Homme in the creative furnace of California's Palm Desert, Queens of the Stone Age are the rock crazies who held onto their brains; the iron-fisted pile drivers for whom the scalpel of wit was also a trusted weapon. And the outfit has never fought shy of shaking up its assets with a guest slot or two: the sludge-churning highlight here, "Sick, Sick, Sick," features Julian Casablancas from the Stokes, while "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" beefs up the backing vocals with Judas Priest's Rob Halford.

Survey the widescreen soundscape of QOTSA, in Next Steps.

With second album R, QOTSA chose not to overindulge their propensity for heaviness by weaving a trippy and side-winding kind of mellowness into the mix — check out "Auto Pilot" — and in so doing, signaled there was much more to them than straight-up bone-grinding guitar rock. The band's 2005 release, Lullabies to Paralyze (recorded after bassist Nick Oliveri was fired from the band, but still a classic despite the loss of such a key player), finds prime mover Homme at his finest, equally confident in a thunderstorm or a sinister fog: check out "Everybody Knows That You're Insane."

Around its core of skull-thumpin' rock, and a loose cadre of guest musicians (notably Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters and Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top), Queens of the Stone Age has evolved into a beast of surprising subtlety, hurling meteors one moment, hanging cobwebs from stars the next. The firing of bassist Nick Oliveri before the release of 2005's Lullabies to Paralyze marked something of a turning point for the band, but a strong lynchpin in Josh Homme has meant that — in spite of his diverting side-projects, Eagles of Death Metal, Them Crooked Vultures, and the Desert Sessions — QOTSA remains a driving force in hard, experimental, sometimes-psychedelic, never-predictable, always-captivating rock.