This Desert Life is the third studio album from American rock band Counting Crows.

The cover art is by noted comic book artist Dave McKean, best known for his work with Neil Gaiman, and was adapted from the cover art McKean did for Gaiman's picture book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

The album contains the same personnel as the band's previous studio album, Recovering the Satellites, being David Bryson (guitar), Adam Duritz (vocals), Charlie Gillingham (keyboards), Matt Malley (bass), Ben Mize (drums) and Dan Vickrey (guitars), with multi-instrumentalist David Immerglück, who formerly was credited as a session player on the previous two albums, promoted to full member.

[10] In addition, producer David Lowery also compared Counting Crows' past works from a more commercial aspect, stating, "Commercially it's been very successful for [Counting Crows] to be very introspective and sort of sad, so on this record, I thought we'd get a least a little bit of this humor and reverence to come through".

While writing and recording this album, the band used "Colorblind" in the soundtrack to Cruel Intentions and also the non-album track "Baby, I'm a Big Star Now" Rounders.