The Kills

The Kills are an indie rock band formed by American singer Alison Mosshart ("VV") and British guitarist Jamie Hince ("Hotel"). Their first three albums, Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, and Midnight Boom, have garnered critical praise. Blood Pressures, their fourth and most recent studio album, was released on April 4, 2011, worldwide and April 5, 2011, in the United States.

Career

Mosshart was previously in Floridian punk rock band Discount, and Hince was in the British rock bands Fiji, Scarfo and Blyth Power. Before the two had met, Mosshart overheard Hince playing music in an upstairs flat during Mosshart's European tour with Discount. They finally met up, and started playing around with some music ideas. After Mosshart went back to Florida under the influence of Lauren Antonina Herbert, she continued writing songs with Jamie, by sending her ideas overseas to London, where he lived. Mosshart saved her money and eventually moved to London. The duo officially started. Wanting to cut themselves off from their pasts, Mosshart and Hince renamed themselves "VV" and "Hotel", respectively. Hince said that he and Mosshart "got drunk one day and named each other off the top of our heads as a stupid romantic ode to the pop art scene." Later, after each wrote multiple band name ideas on typewriters, Mosshart and Hince decided on a new name, The Kills.

Kills (mixtape)

Kills is a mixtape by jj, released on Christmas Eve 2010.

Background

The mixtape was first mentioned by Elin from jj in a video interview for Swedish National Television while on tour in Europe. The title for the mixtape was though never revealed. First when the lead single from the mixtape, "Let Them", was released on October 12, the title of the mixtape was revealed to be Kills (also jj kills or jj fucking kills).

Being a mixtape, Kills was released completely for free, as a direct download, at Sincerely Yours website on Christmas Eve 2010. After just three days since being released, Kills had been downloaded more than 30,000 times, a number generated from only two of the several file hosting services. After one week of release, the number had increased to over 42,000 downloads, and as of January 21, 2011, Kills had been downloaded over 80,000 times from these two links alone. These links were then deleted.

Before the release, no other tracks besides from "Let Them" was confirmed to be on the mixtape, although several songs containing samples and jj vocals had been played on different dj-sets by members of jj. For example, the song "New Work" which has vocals by jj and contains samples from Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind and lyrics from Broder Daniel's "Work". As mentioned in an interview made as early as February 2010, the songs on the mixtape all "blended together" and created a completely seamless record.