Production was rushed in order to capture a "real tense feeling" and the band's energy, and was their first album to be mastered in a studio.

Musically, White Blood Cells is a garage rock record featuring lyrics about love, hope, betrayal, and paranoia.

White Blood Cells received widespread acclaim from music critics, and brought the band to the forefront of the 2000s garage rock revival.

[15] The cover art of White Blood Cells depicts Jack and Meg surrounded by people wielding television and video cameras, which was intended to both comment and satirize on the music industry.

[7] The lyrics featured in White Blood Cells explore love, hope, betrayal, and paranoia, brought on by the increasing media attention the duo began receiving.

"[14] "Little Room" is "homily", written in response to White's favorite song, "Grinnin' in Your Face" by Son House.

[7] Two consecutive tracks described by Stylus Magazine's Andrew Unterberger as engaging filler, "I Think I Smell a Rat" features lines that rhyme with "rat", while "Aluminum" is a heavy metal instrumental that features Jack and Meg screaming wordlessly over a sludgey guitar riff akin to early Nirvana.

[46][47][48] AllMusic editor Heather Phares wrote: "Jack and Meg White's third effort for Sympathy for the Record Industry wraps their powerful, deceptively simple style around meditations on fame, love, and betrayal... it's precisely this mix of strength and sweetness, among other contrasts, that makes the White Stripes so intriguing.

Likewise, White Blood Cells' ability to surprise old fans and win over new ones makes it one of the Stripes' finest albums.

"[25] Dan Killan and Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork said that "Jack and Meg White summon the Holy Spirit and channel it through 16 perfectly concise songs of longing, with dirty, distorted electric guitar cranked to maximum amplification, crashing, bruised drums, and little else.

"[49] Rolling Stone said that, on White Blood Cells, "Jack's Delta-roadhouse fantasies, Detroit-garage-rock razzle and busted-love lyricism, as well as Meg's toy-thunder drumming all peaked at once.

[55] The album was bolstered by the "Fell in Love with a Girl" single and its Lego-animation music video,[56][57] which also earned a gold certification from the BPI.

[60] White Blood Cells propelled the band to the forefront of the 2000s garage rock revival,[61] and is considered a defining album of the period.

[68][69] Jon Lusk of BBC believed the album solidified their success thanks to "the crunching, insistent simplicity of Meg White's drumming, which sticks like glue to Jack White's intense, rhythmic, blues-based riffing; a broad, knowing sense of pop history, and of course their by now well-established red/white branding imagery.

[96] British choreographer Wayne McGregor used the track "Aluminum"—among other of the band's songs—for his production Chroma, a piece he created for the Royal Ballet in London, England.

[97][98] It was played to the band as a surprise in Cincinnati Music Hall, Ohio in 2006,[99][100] and won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production.