Songfacts®:

• This dark, mysterious track was released as the first single from Alice in Chains' fifth studio album and hit #1 on the Rock Radio charts. Singer-guitarist Jerry Cantrell told Rolling Stone that he was pleasantly surprised by the song's immediate acceptance. "We just put that song out there for the fans and then it ended up turning into a number one single, a six-minute sludgy metal tune," he said. "That's always fun, to see something like that happen."
• The sci-fi themed video was filmed by director Roboshobo (Metallica, Mastodon, Green Day).
• This was the first riff that singer-guitarist Jerry Cantrell came up with for The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. He recalled to Grammy.com: "I was warming up in the room in Vegas, our very last show of the tour, and I remember our manager, Beno, was in the room and they were sitting there talking and they were worried about me because I was pretty close to having pneumonia. I was so ill. I started playing that riff and I recorded that riff. I saw Nick (Raskulinecz, producer) bobbing his head. I dug it too, so I recorded it. That's actually the first riff that happened."