The Kills are an English-American rock duo formed by American singer Alison "VV" Mosshart and English guitarist Jamie "Hotel" Hince.

[5] Hince supplied her with a four-track tape recorder and insisted she write music as well as lyrics while on tour with her band.

Recording as VV and Hotel, they contributed the song "Restaurant Blouse" to the compilation If the Twenty-First Century Did Not Exist, It Would Be Necessary to Invent It.

In 2006, "Wait" was used in Children of Men, where it was described in-universe as "a blast from the past all the way back to 2003, that beautiful time when people refused to accept the future is just around the corner".

[13] A 40-minute DVD documentary was included with a limited number of copies and features interview, performance and on the road footage shot on tour.

On September 11, 2009, the duo announced on their MySpace page that they had begun work on their fourth studio album though no release date had been set.

[16] A video for the first single from Blood Pressures, "Satellite", was released on February 9, 2011, followed By Future Starts Slow, Baby Says, The Last Goodbye, and Wild Charms in September 2012.

[17] "Future Starts Slow" was also used in a promotion for the episode "The Wait Is Almost Over" of hit TV series True Blood (season 4).

The song from the same album "Damned If She Do" was also used in the promotion of The Vampire Diaries third season, and has received positive reviews from the fans.

[21] Paris Spleen: The Kills Live at L'Olympia, the film of their show from November 2011 was released on 20 September 2013 in partnership with the French clothing company Equipment.

[27] The duo embarked on a lengthy world tour,[28] but were forced to cancel European festival dates after Mosshart was diagnosed with pneumonia.

In 2018, they released a 7-inch single with cover versions of Saul Williams' "List of Demands (Reparations)" and Peter Tosh's "Steppin' Razor", followed by a promotional 7-inch a year later for National Dive Bar Day with the B-sides "Blue Moon" and "Night Train".

[34] Mosshart also released a handful of solo singles that year: "Rise",[35] "It Ain't Water",[36] and a cover of "State Trooper" by Bruce Springsteen.

[37] Sound Wheel, a spoken-word album that served as a companion piece to Car Ma, was released on August 7, 2020 via Third Man Records.

[38] Hince, meanwhile, focused on collaborative songwriting; he worked on Deap Vally's Digital Dream EP in February 2021,[39] as well as The Big Pink's single "Love Spins On Its Axis", which he co-wrote with the band and Jamie T.[40] The band returned in June 2022, playing their first show in almost three years in support of Jack White at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.

[41] In July 2023, the band released their first new original music in seven years: A double A-side single, "New York" and "LA Hex".

[43][44] The band has cited Royal Trux, PJ Harvey, the Velvet Underground, Sleater-Kinney, Fugazi, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Pixies, Bikini Kill, and Sonic Youth as influences.