890.6m all-time streams (14 Feb '26)

Hailing from Palm Desert, CA, Kyuss (pronounced "kai-uss") has become something like a heavy metal equivalent to The Velvet Underground.

Although they are widely acknowledged as pioneers of the booming stoner rock scene of the 1990s, the band enjoyed little commercial success during their brief existence, but their combination of sludgy, down-tuned guitars (often played through a bass amp for maximum, earth-shaking intensity), spacey jams, galloping thrash metal rhythms, and organic drums became a blueprint, often copied, but never quite replicated by countless underground metal bands.