Meet the Kills

The Kills treat feedback as foreplay. When Jamie “Hotel” Hince points his guitar at Alison “VV” Mosshart, she writhes as if he’s hit an orgasmic pitch. When Mosshart fixes her fire-starting gaze on him, he paws at his instrument as if possessed by lust. Steam rises from their stage show, though the perspiration starts out as cold sweat before the band brings it to a boil. Despite the group’s seemingly abundant confidence, Hince and Mosshart thrive on tension, and not just the sexual sort.

“We’re always nervous,” Mosshart says. “We’re nervous when we wake up. If we’re distracted beforehand and don’t have time to think about what we’re playing, those are the worst shows, because we walk up there feeling quite normal.”

Minutes before this cell-phone conversation, the Kills played an afternoon showcase at an Austin, Texas, record store. This was a stressful scenario, given that the Kills’ death-blues tones are better in darker settings. For that matter, so is Mosshart’s vampiric complexion, which is why, she says, she’s wandering away from the wide-windowed record store to find a spot of shade.

Mosshart developed her disdain for daylight in Vero Beach, Florida, where she fronted the smarter-than-usual pop-punk outfit Discount from ages 14 to 19. While on tour in 1999, she spent an evening in a south London apartment directly beneath the dwelling of a guitarist whose strangled notes seeped through the ceiling. Suppressing her anxiety, she finally knocked on the door to unmask the upstairs experimentalist.

It was Hince, who had just left the noisy project Scarfo and was working on solo compositions. His room layout was similar to her own at home, with the autobiography of Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick displayed prominently. Mosshart had read it 11 times; its descriptions of an art-as-life aesthetic made her long for a community beyond the Warped Tour circuit. The two bonded over the book, discussing it for six straight hours. “That pretty much sealed our friendship forever,” she says.

It also secured Mosshart’s impending expat status. Discount was walking defunct, having already made the decision to call it quits after one last string of dates.

“When I started Discount, it was the greatest thing in my life,” she recalls. “I was a militant artist. That’s all I wanted to do. I felt like when I was a kid, everyone else was a militant artist, because that’s how they talked and behaved. Suddenly, I felt like I didn’t know anybody anymore. I felt sad, and I needed to find something else.”

Mosshart sent Hince sound collages and soundtrack snippets for videos she had made; he replied with suggestions about which ideas to enlarge. After six months of constant correspondence, Mosshart bought a one-way ticket to London.

“I never wanted to be the girl singer with a guitar sitting on a stage,” she says. “I wanted a companion, and I needed an editor. We opened up, which was a strange thing for each of us to do because we’re both quite shy. We did it awkwardly and in our own way.”

The Kills had few possessions, fewer friends and no label deal when they started assembling their debut disc, Keep on Your Mean Side, and that sense of desperate isolation informs its emotionally intense song cycle. The 2002 album was something of a success, which led to an eye-opening six-week stint opening for Franz Ferdinand. Mosshart, a punk-scene product who had little experience with stadium shows, was astonished at the reception the headliners received.

“I’ve never seen people freak out that much,” she says. “They were crying, screaming, bringing banners and throwing things. It’s not as if that made me feel jealous, because that sort of reaction to my band would probably insult me. I feel like we’re artists, not entertainers, and I want a different thought process out of people. But it’s fucking amazing to watch.”

Hince and Mosshart enjoyed their arena experience, but they had trouble writing on the road. Now signed to a major label (Rough Trade/RCA), the Kills could have secluded themselves in style once they returned home. Instead, they retreated to Benton Harbor, Michigan, to a studio that houses Sly Stone’s cursed Flickinger mixing deck. Legend has it that the console has brought ruin to countless engineers and careers, making it just the right electronic accessory for the discord-fueled duo.

The Kills arrived with plenty of inspirational materials (journals, artwork, photographs) but no completed songs. After a month, the group emerged with No Wow, an album that draws its dire vibe directly from the environment that produced it.

“Bands tend to seek out a place that’s really comfortable, with couches and catering,” Mosshart says. “There’s no adrenaline. I can’t create like that. We’re talking about living in Russia for a month next time, doing something different that will wake us up and freak us out.”

Both arousing and alarming, No Wow induces flashbacks to the blues’ badass era, when storytellers described illicit affairs from an unrepentant first-person perspective and guitar slingers sold their souls for skills. Mosshart must have conducted her own Luciferian legal wranglings to become P.J. Harvey’s dirty-blues doppelgänger.

The group’s distorted riffs and stark beats paint a bleak industrial scene — No Wow conjures images of disgruntled workers who sneak back into the factory after-hours to hoist weary toasts and take rides on the assembly lines. The beats throb at times, but Mosshart is no dance diva. If I’m so evil, why are you so satisfied? she sings through an audible smirk. The answer is that the Kills, like the bards of the Delta, make vicarious menace more compelling than cheerier emotions.

Like another male-female duo with blues roots, the Kills understand the importance of appearances. Whereas the White Stripes enhance their brand name with candy-cane costumes, the Kills favor an ever-changing but always stylish wardrobe. Both members have chiseled cheekbones, with Mosshart evoking images of a gothed-out Aimee Mann and Hince looking ready to play some charming man’s edgy rival in a British comedy.

“With bands, if they look like roadies, I won’t listen to them,” Mosshart says. “Maybe I’m really on-the-surface like that, but I think the same thing about guitars and cars. If it looks cool, it’s cool, and if it doesn’t, I don’t want to play it or drive it.”

Flashy as they might be, the Kills harness dread every time they step onstage. But more important than the nerves that fuel the group’s raw power is the rare connection between Hince and Mosshart.

“He is a direct line to all my emotions,” Mosshart says. “When he’s down on something I’ve done, I take it really seriously. And when he thinks it’s great, I believe it and don’t care what anyone says. He’s all the things I want out of myself that I’m not.”