The latest collaborative project featuring desert-rock legends Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri, power trio Stöner comes to the Bay Area this week to play shows in Santa Cruz and Albany.

Named after a fictional demigod from the role-playing game Dungeons And Dragons, Kyuss (pronounced kai-uhs) originated in the Californian desert in the late 1980s, jamming in small, isolated towns.

Indeed, Bjork and Oliveri most notably hail from Kyuss, the SoCal psych-rock standard-bearers, and Oliveri joined Kyuss' Josh Homme in Queens of the Stone Age until 2004.

Grohl: Well, I discovered the desert — Rancho de la Luna — in the late-'90s, I guess it was 1997. And I had met the guys from Kyuss, and I had become friends with Josh and Nick [Oliveri].

Planet Desert Rock Weekend, a riff-heavy fest born out of a love for stoner rock, doom and heavy psych, returns with 20 bands performing non-overlapping sets across four nights at two Las Vegas ...

Lalli also is playing bass in the new psychedelic desert rock supergroup Mario Lalli and the Rubber Snake Charmers alongside guitarist Brant Bjork (who played drums with Kyuss and Fu Manchu in ...

Desert rock and anything related to Kyuss has a larger following in Europe than the U.S. European audiences embrace all of the former members of Kyuss and pack concert halls to see them.