Lead singer of indie rock band The Kills Alison Mosshart says she and bandmate Jamie Hince have started work on their next studio album.
“We’re not on tour right now so the point is regrouping and being inspired and finding new directions and new ideas. We write every day,” Mosshart tells Billboard. “We literally toured for three straight years. We got off the road late November 2018 and then we played a handful of this or that.”
The Kills’ latest trek was in support of their fifth studio album Ash & Ice. The band extensively toured the 13-track album since its release in 2016 and have now gone back to their respective homes—Mosshart in Nashville and Hince in Los Angeles—to begin writing its follow up.
Fan’s last taste of new music from the band arrived in March of 2018, when the duo released a 7-inch vinyl single cover of Saul William’s “List of Demands (Reparations)” backed with a garage rock take on reggae artist Peter Tosh’s “Steppin’ Razor.”
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“Back when I started playing music, all we did was buy 7-inches,” says Mosshart, whose musical career began in the 1990s with punk band Discount. The singer, writer and artist has since gone on to form The Dead Weather alongside Jack White and worked with Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream, Placebo and the Foo Fighters. “B-sides are so commonly overlooked, especially in this day and age.”
For National Dive Bar Day (July 7) The Kills have teamed up with Seagram’s 7 Crown Whiskey to release a new 7” of Kills’ b-sides written in dive bars.
The 7-inch vinyl record will include bonus track “Night Train” from 2008’s Midnight Boom and “Blue Moon” which featured as a B-side for 2011 single “Future Starts Slow” off The Kills’ fourth studio album Blood Pressures.
Both songs will also be cut on a limited edition 7” vinyl record for the very first time in the U.S. and available at events on National Dive Bar Day in these seven cities: Dallas, Denver, Jacksonville, Nashville, New York, Seattle and Sacramento, Calif.
“Some of our B-sides are really my favorite songs. I feel like they are the coolest and weirdest and most interesting. Usually they are not the songs that people play on the radio,” says Mosshart. “I am really excited for people to hear these songs on their own.”
The singles will be also be available for free on participating TouchTunes jukeboxes across the country on National Dive Bar Day.
“Everybody loves a dive bar so if they’re like if we’re going to open a bar let’s make it feel neighborhoody and small and intimate and family run. It’s nice,” says Mosshart. “Every time I am at a dive bar, I can be found at the jukebox. That’s my position. That’s my spot.”
In addition to working on new music, Mosshart has spent her time off the road compiling her first multi-media book. Scheduled for release this month, Dover Street Market will be releasing a collection of artwork, photography and writing in Mosshart’s book titled Car Ma.
“It is very car-heavy, very car-centric. It is a lot of short stories and poems. I didn’t limit myself. I don’t know what this book is. It is the weirdest thing ever. I don’t know to define it,” says Mosshart about the collection that was inspired by her upbringing in Florida with a mother who worked as an art teacher and a father who sold used cars.
“There are photos and paintings and drawings. It spans about 17 years. It is a really beautiful collection of my obsessions, my obsessions with cars and little tiny back stories that you have to put together yourself between the imagery and what comes up,” Mosshart adds of the book she describes as “fender bender portraiture.”
“It is like going on an adventure, going inside that book,” Mosshart tells Billboard. “It was really fun. I think I like doing that. I want to do more.”