The Kills Music Videos, Pictures and Photos including Lollapalooza Music Festival, U.R.A. Fever Music Videos on Roxwel

The Kills

The year is 2000. Alison Mosshart is a sassy girl from Florida, currently the vocalist of Gainesville-based underground punk band Discount. Jamie Hince is a tall and tattooed British dude - the guitarist for anarcho-folk-punk outfit Blyth Power - staying in the room above Mossheart in a seedy motel. She heard Hince playing one day, and went upstairs to meet him; the pair formed a fast friendship, a friendship that continued even when Hince boarded a plane back to England. For months the duo air-mailed tapes to each other, beginning a longtime collaboration that one day coalesce into The Kills.

By 2001, Discount had broken up and Blyth Power had entered an extended hiatus; Mosshart and Hince had no other musical commitments and decided to turn their overseas mixtape exchange into a full time project. Mosshart left her life in the United States behind to take a plane to England where she met up once again with Hince. Christening themselves The Kills, Hince and Mosshart - adopting the monikers Hotel and VV, respectively - began to record their own brand of bluesy lo-fi garage rock, with Mosshart’s haunting vocals and Hint’s sparse guitar work set over minimalist drum beats from a Roland drum machine.

The Kills produced a number of early recordings and demos that eventually caught the attention of independent label Domino Records (Bonde Do Role, Arctic Monkeys), who released the pair’s first album Keep on Your Mean Side in early 2003. Though VV and Hotel maintain a strong anti-establishment, DIY ethic - no doubt holdovers from their humble punk rock beginnings - they accepted the record deal from Domino due to the label’s artist-oriented nature; Domino owner Laurence Bell is known for signing obscure and unique music, and affords artists a level of control over their work not often seen in the record industry. Keep on Your Mean Side was a modest success, with singles "Fried My Little Brains" and "Pull a U" inviting comparisons to acts like The Evens and The White Stripes.