Queens of the Stone Age have released “Where The Goth Girls At?” with a music video directed by Christopher Gruse and Tony Wolski. The September 23 single is the third preview of their ninth album, Perfecth, following “Easy Street” and “Insignificant Other.” Steve Agee, Scarlett Kapella and Lou Lou Safran appear in the video alongside the band.
Josh Homme traced the song’s inspiration to the goth women he watched working a JCPenney makeup counter as a teenager. He remembered them giving older customers goth makeovers, an image tied to his own attraction to the women behind the counter. “Teenage love, ain’t it grand?” he said in the message accompanying the video.
The song’s reference to feeling alive after almost dying also prompted Homme to revisit an earlier experience. Speaking with Consequence, he recalled nearly drowning in a boating accident in Idaho at 12. He described enjoying food and sunsets more intensely afterward. “It’s hard not to feel the joy in those moments after that,” he said.
Homme and Michael Shuman produced Perfecth, with recording sessions taking place in New Orleans and Los Angeles. Its nine songs examine love between family members, friends and others, including the damage those relationships can cause and the possibility of recovery. The band drew on kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold, as a way of thinking about the record. The repaired object retains visible evidence of what happened to it.
That acceptance of imperfection extends to the album’s title. Homme deliberately altered the spelling of “perfect” because he felt the word described something that does not exist. The resulting Perfecth gives the record a name that is itself imperfect, consistent with an album concerned with what survives damage and how it is repaired.
Perfecth is due October 30, 2026, through Matador. Preorders are available through the band’s Bandcamp page.
