Josh Homme picks up a hitchhiking Grace Libby in the hallucinatory video for Desert Sessions’ “If You Run.” The track appears on the supergroup’s latest compilation, Desert Sessions Vols. 11 and 12, a.k.a. Arrivederci Despair and Tightwads & Nitwits & Critics & Heels.
Directed by Rio Hackford, the clip shows the singer-songwriter Libby wandering Joshua Tree in a long white dress, her thumb stuck out on the side of the road. “You can lie for the honey, lie for the wealth,” she sings over a haunting, sparse acoustic guitar. “You can lie to each other but you better never lie to yourself.”
Homme picks her up in his car and the duo ride through the desert against saturated skies. The Queens of the Stone Age frontman introduces Libby to the rest of the musicians in the project, including ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Les Claypool of Primus. Libby doses them and they all trip out as she mystically dances in front of a fire.
“The video was inspired by Josh bringing an unknown Libby Grace into the Dessert Sessions arena to show her haunting magic to the world,” Hackford said in a statement. “Homme, Sweeney, and I are some of the only people who have heard Libby’s music, so the idea of them introducing her to the players and recording process lit the fuse. The song lent itself perfectly to the lonesome desert landscape and the spell that the Rancho can cast on anyone that passes through its doors.”
“If You Run” follows the video for “Easer Said Than Done.” Desert Sessions Vols. 11 and 12 dropped last October. The collective also launched Dessert Sessions: Feral Recipes for the Joyful Destruction of Taste Buds, a collection of recipes inspired by the frequent misspelling of their name. The bizarre recipes include sardine-topped doughnut cakes and avocado and sour cream gelatin plates.
“Desert Sessions are such a great recharger of your artistic battery,” Homme told Rolling Stone last year. “I’ve been trying to do these for a while and life gets in the way, but after touring the last Queens record for a while [2017’s Villains], I just thought this would be such a great recharging. I think that’s kind of what pushed me over the cliff this time.”