Video Of The Week: Queens Of The Stone Age

(product links go to sponsored Amazon products, proper name links go to related pages on my blogs, news links go to source pages)

Just days after leader Josh Homme confirmed having recorded a song with Shania Twain, Queens Of The Stone Age themselves released a video for a country-ish duet with none other than Nikki Lane, this generation's ultimate outlaw country singer: Directed by the duo of Christopher Gruse and Tony Wolski from Hungry Man Productions, with cameos from veteran actors Diedrich Bader (Drew Carey Show, Veep) and wife Dulcy Rogers (Father of the Bride Part II), the video for Easy Street follows a battered and bruised Homme seemingly running from a motley crew of disguised degenerate characters and then hosting a party for them at a huge cottage.

It's definitely a slower jam than most QOTSA songs, but not completely out of place considering past tracks like Make It Wit Chu and the sublimely subdued cover of Billy Idol's White Wedding.

I'll probably require time for it to grow on me a bit more - and will likely hope I don't see it too often live - but it will probably make its way onto my Eternal Playlist eventually.

Video Of The Week: Nikki Lane

I can totally relate to Nikki Lane, who moved to NYC only to be forced out by its high cost of living that is not artist-friendly; I came back home to Montréal, she moved to Nashville - big enough to qualify as a ''city'', but not so much down in the Red States as her native South Carolina.

Director Andrew Hines captured the essence of her energy in this video, for the song Right Time, giving it country's requisite amount of white trash-ness (couples fighting, day-time beer drinking, a poor neighbourhood that could pass as a trailer park), but also the power, control, strength, coolness and hard-headedness Lane naturally exhudes. She is like Johnny Ramone (or Joan Jett) walking amongst a bunch of decrepit nobodies.

Also, this is a nice way to use Dan Auerbach's trademark Black Keys sound (he produced the record), without relying on it as the basis of your own art. Well played.