Pitchfork

It's time to chug some cherry cola and unleash the Shasta beast, because pop-metal pranksters Eagles of Death Metal begin seducing America tonight. EoDM kick their tour off at the Morongo Casino in Cabazon, CA and then work their way south to Texas for a trio of dates before hitting the Midwest. After circling back to California, it's off to England for a festival date. In July, they'll hit the road again with partner-in-sleaze Peaches. Jesse "The Devil" Hughes, his mustache, and the touring band plan on supporting their new album Death by Sexy for the foreseeable future, so additional dates are expected to follow.

Peaceful, easy feeling:

05-23 Cabazon, CA - Key Club at Morongo Casino
05-24 Santa Ana, CA - Galaxy Concert Theater
05-27 Houston, TX - Warehouse Live Studio
05-28 Austin, TX - The Parish
05-29 Dallas, TX - Gypsy Tea Room
05-31 St. Louis, MO - Creepy Crawl
06-01 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium
06-02 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave II (Downstairs)
06-03 Minneapolis, MN - The Ascot Room at the Quest
06-04 Kansas City, MO - Record Bar
06-06 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
06-07 Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot
06-10 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
06-14 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
06-15 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
06-18 Manchester, England - Lancastershire County Cricket Club
07-15 Denver, CO - Gothic Theater *
07-19 Montreal, Quebec - Spectrum *
07-23 Philadelphia, PA - TLA *
07-24 Baltimore, MD - Recker's *
07-26 Norfolk, VA - Norva *
07-27 Atlanta, GA - Variety *
07-28 New Orleans, LA - House of Blues *
07-29 Austin, TX - Emo's *

* with Peaches

The glow of Death by Sexy, which was released just last month, hasn't even begun to fade, yet Hughes is already planning more releases. According to Billboard.com, he recently recorded two Queens of the Stone Age covers, "Broken Box" and "I Never Came", for his "Pair of Queens" series, as well as two covers of recent Eagles of Death Metal tour mates the Strokes.

"I was so overwhelmed and impressed with the Strokes on tour with them that I had to write music about them, and I had to cover their songs," Hughes told Billboard. As for Queens of the Stone Age, Hughes and Queens frontman Josh Homme are old friends, and Homme is an on-again-off-again member of EoDM. "I look up to him musically and I just wanted to say, 'Man, you rule,'" Hughes told Rolling Stone in 2004. "It's also a vanity spite, it's 'I'm owning your song!'"

Hughes hopes to have the covers prepped for release sometime before the end of the year, most likely around the same time he has pegged for his solo debut, Fabulous Weapons. (They can totally fight Xiu Xiu's Fabulous Muscles.) "It's mostly my hillbilly influence," he told Billboard.com. "It still rocks, but it would clearly be in the vein of Beggars Banquet Rolling Stones. It's roots-- I'm a Carter Family fanatic, that's kind of what I grew up on, so it's more harmony-based, more single guitar lines. It's more like a gospel choir set-up."

* Pitchfork Track Review: Eagles of Death Metal: "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)"
* Eagles of Death Metal: http://www.eaglesofdeathmetal.com
* Downtown Records: www.downtownrecordings.com