Credit: Queens of The Stone Age
Wed 30 September 2026 3:30, UK
For their latest single, ‘Where the Goth Girls At?’, Queens of the Stone Age place themselves in their very own horrific short film.
Ahead of their upcoming album, Perfecth, the band has unearthed two singles, the acoustic ‘Easy Street’ and the languid groove of ‘Insignificant Other.’ Now, ‘Where the Goth Girls At?’ emerges as the most adrenalised of the three, driven by lust and fantasies.
In the song’s music video, they set the scene at a factory, where frontman Josh Homme is cast at the helm, keeping a watchful eye over the crew of navy jumpsuit-clad workers. He sings into an intercom microphone, a lit cigarette glued to his hand amidst the overflowing ashtray that rests on his desk. We watch with him as we are introduced to the employees, and a thread becomes clear: the goths are taking over.
As the ‘lead goth’, dancer/artist Scarlett Kapella flips off the camera before beginning to recruit each member of the factory into an unspoken, gory goth cult; with each kiss, the workers spew a gooey, black bile before emerging in leather and black makeup. One worker screams into an intercom, “It’s all fucked up, man! Please help, everybody’s fucking goth!”
If you can get past the cringeworthy title, the track harnesses Queens of the Stone Age’s desert-rock signature into a slow groove, where Homme’s vocals sound as though they’re trapped in a smoky haze, falsettos vibrating along with the stomp of the melody. The lyrics, meanwhile, paint an intriguing portrait of girls doing their makeup at the mall, reminiscent of a bad tattoo, and “sterile eyes get blue applied persuasions”. They smoke clove cigarettes, wear black and run away from the sun, all clichés of Homme’s teenage fantasies, living in the suburban Palm Desert in California.
“Growing up…watching the goth girls working the counter at JCPenney and giving goth makeovers to the old ladies, that’s when I knew the only place I want to be is where the goth girls at,” he explained in a statement after the song’s release, “Teenage love, ain’t it grand?”
There is also a curious line in the chorus of ‘Where The Goth Girls At?’ that points to something deeper, beyond his recollections of his teenage years: “Never felt so alive as the day I almost died”. Near-death experiences were, tragically, not foreign to Homme, who had endured brushes with danger in his life on a number of occasions. Speaking with Consequence Of Sound, he detailed an instance from when he was a child.
Further reading: From The Vault
“I think everyone in this life is either experiencing a near-life or near-death experience, or you certainly will if you haven’t,” he explained, “There’s a bit of euphoria post those [experiences]. I almost drowned when I was 12, and it was really wonderful in the days and weeks post that [incident]. Food tastes amazing, and the subset was fuckin’ juicy.”
He was quick to caution against any speculation: “I’m not saying you should go out and get yourself a near-death experience,” he clarified, “but certainly those occur, and that euphoria, it takes a while to dissipate, and it’s hard not to feel the joy in those moments after that.”
With a theatrical flair, ‘Where The Goth Girls At?’ weaves humour with the thrill of being alive. And as the closing line repeats, “Sun don’t chase them all away”, we’re not just reminded of Homme’s memories of “teenage love” but of the sheer joy in being able to look back in time.
