Insound Staff Pick - 2008! The Kills are VV (vocals, guitar) and Hotel (drums, vocals, guitar), and they're finally ready to end the longing. No Wow is their heavily anticipated follow-up to 2002's Keep on Your Mean Side, and it is soon to be the seminal sweating, sultry stomp. You see, as experts of reduction seduction, The Kills have that rare ability to speak volumes without saying much -- No Wow clicks and seethes with glorious understatements. Frill-free and fuzzed,    [ read more ]

CD $15.99

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Comprised of ex-pat American "V.V." (a.k.a. Alison) on vocals and guitar and Briton "Hotel" (a.k.a. Jamie) on guitar and vocals(plus their trusty drum machine and dictaphone), The Kills have spent the last year building a smoldering live reputation. Keep On Your Mean Side more than fulfills the promise of the debut EP (most of which is also included here). The duo mine primal, swampy blues riffs and forge them into sparkling hooks. There's a swaggering confidence and tension in the interplay that recalls th   [ read more ]

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This duo subtly and organically fuses pop, glam, blues, art-punk, and hip-hop in a manner that flits between light and dark, funny and morbid, experimental and cute. The result is a short, sharp twelve track album of sensual, fresh, and atmospheric songs. A reminder that no one on earth makes rock 'n' roll quite like The Kills.

CD $13.99

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VINYL FORMAT. This duo subtly and organically fuses pop, glam, blues, art-punk, and hip-hop in a manner that flits between light and dark, funny and morbid, experimental and cute. The result is a short, sharp twelve track album of sensual, fresh, and atmospheric songs. A reminder that no one on earth makes rock 'n' roll quite like The Kills.

LP $18.99

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VINYL FORMAT. "We ain't born typical," Alison and Jamie insist, teasingly, on sensual first single "U.R.A Fever," and the tune punches their point home. Two minutes plus of dark, stark sleaze-pop, its prowling tempo, glammy textures and surrealist brevity provide the sexed-up antidote to fast, shouty and empty corporate indie rock. "U.R.A Fever" is the first release from the Kills since their 2005 album, No Wow, and is a taster of what's to come from their eagerly anticipated new album expected in Ma   [ read more ]

7" $4.00

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This duo subtly and organically fuses pop, glam, blues, art-punk, and hip-hop in a manner that flits between light and dark, funny and morbid, experimental and cute. The result is a short, sharp twelve track album of sensual, fresh, and atmospheric songs. A reminder that no one on earth makes rock 'n' roll quite like The Kills.

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On their full-length debut, Keep on Your Mean Side, the Kills deliver on the promise of their Black Rooster EP, serving up more of their sneering, sexy blues-punk with a little more polish and premeditation. It's easy to lump them in with the current crop of garage rock revivalists -- and granted, the band bears more than a passing resemblance to the White Stripes' bluesy sound and boy-girl lineup -- but Keep on Your Mean Side suggests that the Kills' true lineage comes from a dar   [ read more ]

CD $34.18

The Kills' Fried My Little Brains single presents one of the gutsiest-sounding tracks from their debut album, Keep on Your Mean Side, and backs it with two new tracks that emphasize the loose, raw sound that made the band so exciting in the first place. While releasing a poppier or prettier track from the album, such as "Cat Claw" or "Wait," might have been a more obvious move, "Fried My Little Brains" showcases the churning rhythms and tandem guitars and vocals that define the Kills' s   [ read more ]

CD $21.83

It's hard to believe that the Kills could sound even darker, tighter, and more stripped-down than they did on Keep on Your Mean Side, but somehow they managed it: No Wow is one of the most highly concentrated rock albums in a long, long time. In fact, its tight focus and barely relenting intensity make Keep on Your Mean Side's more traditional ebb and flow feel downright slack. The band's throbbing guitars, to-the-point rhythms, and sexy, dangerous lyrics have been simmered and tempered down    [ read more ]

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CD $17.08

In the three years between No Wow and Midnight Boom, it sounds like the Kills discovered that having fun is actually much cooler than searching for haughty minimalist rock perfection. While Keep on Your Mean Side and No Wow's sinuous snarls were about as savagely spare and sexy as it's possible to get, their minimalism bordered on monochromatic. Midnight Boom bleeds color, excitement, and emotion into VV and Hotel's music, transforming it into daring, dirty pop that is unrepent   [ read more ]

CD $39.88