Villains by Queens of the Stone Age

Villains, Queens of the Stone Age's seventh album, dropped on Matador on August 25, 2017, and the curveball was who produced it: Mark Ronson. The result is a record that wants you dancing, the riffs still grinding but locked to a strutting, hip-shaking groove, with Josh Homme's falsetto sliding slyly over the top.

It's a strictly in-house affair, too: no guest stars for the first time, Jon Theodore finally aboard as full-time drummer, and Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman and Dean Fertita rounding out the gang. "The Way You Used To Do" swings like a greaser's jukebox fever dream, and "Feet Don't Fail Me" struts in slow and heavy. It debuted at number one in Britain, their first chart-topper there, reached number three in the US and drew a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album, sitting in the middle of the Matador run between ...Like Clockwork and In Times New Roman...

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.