There's a song on Kesha's new album, Rainbow, called "Spaceship," and it turns out that a very real spotting of some out-of-this-world aircraft in the desert played a heavy hand in the singer's creative process this time around.

Rainbow's album art is decked out with flying saucers, and the otherworldly theme comes from a night spent in Joshua Tree that had her wondering what the hell those "little balls of fire in the sky" were floating above her. In an intimate chat with the Zach Sang Show crew, Kesha laid it all bare about her powerful new single, "Praying," and how thrilled she is to be releasing new music for the first time in nearly four years. She says that the album is called Rainbow as it's a "return to color" and a reconnection with levity and her "child-like heart," and touches on how this has been a period of introspection and healing as she's worked through the terribly difficult time she's had in the years leading up to Rainbow's release.

But her Zach Sang Show interview took a surprising detour when she started talking about aliens around the 11-minute mark. Yup. Aliens. Spaceships. UFOs. Some true X-Files action, really.

In a discussion about real stories on the record, Kesha says that "Spaceships" isn't a work of fiction, but something anchored in a real life thanks to that stargazing night in Joshua Tree. "I was a totally sober Sally, just a lady in the desert, and I look up in the sky, and there's a bunch of spaceships!" she exclaims.

"I swear to God, there were like five to seven, and I don't know why I didn't, like, try to take a picture of it — I just looked at it! I was sitting on a rock, and I was like, 'Well, what in the hell is that?' I was trying to figure it out, and then they went away. And then they came back. I was like, 'Maybe they're fires on a mountain?!' really high up in the sky. Then they went away, and then they came back in a formation, and I was like, 'Those are ALIENS. THOSE ARE SPACESHIPS."

Apparently, UFOs look exactly the way you thought they would, and the sight of them inspired theme that runs throughout Rainbow and has more to do with spirituality and pondering your place in the world than anything else. Rainbow drops August 11, but it appears that we'll be hearing more of her new music a lot sooner than that: