Recommended If You Like The Kills

Very few bands “make it.” Far more toil in relative obscurity, only sometimes earning a fan base and a living wage for their art. Many of these little- or under-known acts, though, are the inspiration for or the compatriots of those bigger acts that make it. Thus, The A.V. Club’s Recommended If You Like, where we start with a bigger band—Mumford And Sons, for example—and run down a few acts that the bigger band’s fans might be into.

For this edition, we’re going deep into the realm of London-based band The Kills. Singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince teamed up to start the band in the early days of the last decade, and have garnered quite a following with a scraggly, bluesy post-punk sound. With the group stopping by Kool Haus on Feb. 7, as part of a tour in support of last year’s Blood Pressures, The A.V. Club decided to round up a handful of musical acts that would fit right in on a mix-tape for any fan of The Kills who’s looking to dig deeper into the world of music.

The Dead Weather
Okay, this one is kind of a gimme. Not only does The Kills’ Mosshart sing in The Dead Weather, but also her male counterpart for the foursome’s vocal harmonies is none other than Jack White, who fronted a beloved garage-rock duo that The Kills are often compared to. The lines between The Dead Weather and The Kills are as strong as those between any set of bands sharing songwriters, with a wistful, lumbering, and blues-focused style permeating the music of both acts.

Abe Vigoda
Four-piece punk band Abe Vigoda is one of a handful of L.A. bands that came out of a lo-fi scene centered on an all-ages club called The Smell. That community came to national prominence in 2008 thanks to critically acclaimed post-punk duo No Age. Terms like “noise,” “hardcore,” and “experimental” can be used to describe many of the big acts kicking around in that microcosm. While Abe Vigoda exemplified traits of those styles at different points in its career, the band’s recent work has been something of a sea change. On Abe Vigoda’s fourth album, 2010’s Crush, the group slowed down its jittery tropical sound, caked it in waves of reverb, and touched things up with a cold touch of post-punk straight out of the U.K. circa 1982. Crush has enough guitar tremolo that The Kills’ Jamie Hince must enjoy it.

Mother Mother
Vancouver, British Columbia quintet Mother Mother hasn’t really caught on with music fans outside of Canada, but its tunes should hit home with fans of The Kills. The group makes stomping, indie-rock numbers propelled by beautiful female vocal harmonies. Though the lavish production on Mother Mother’s 2010 album, Eureka, sometimes makes The Kills’ songs sound positively stark, there’s a haunting, eerie aura resting beneath the surface of many Mother Mother songs, which is an effect often found on The Kills’ albums.

Pomegranates
Cincinnati’s Pomegranates make intimate indie-pop ditties that swell and burst with an orchestral-influenced passion. The foursome’s earlier albums have more in common with Arcade Fire than The Kills, but the band changed things up a bit on its last album, 2010’s One Of Us. Pomegranates shed the sugary bursts of their earlier work for an album that has its fair share of rough-around-the-edges songs while retaining the cozy grooves that defined the band. Pomegranates aren’t exactly aesthetically chilly, so their recent turn should be a hit with The Kills fans who are looking a slightly warmer sound.

Captain Beefheart
Don Glen Vliet became a rock legend as Captain Beefheart, a.k.a. Don Van Vliet, and plenty of musicians who have done anything involving a guitar have called him an inspiration. Van Vliet’s best known—and perhaps most infamous—work is the very odd Trout Mask Replica, a sprawling experimental album that takes liberties with the term “rock.” But it’s Captain Beefheart’s 1967 debut, Safe As Milk, that helped build the foundation for The Kills. Safe As Milk is certainly an easier listen than Trout Mask Replica, but it’s got plenty of the weirdo songwriting tendencies that Vliet would later focus on and that mark The Kills’ tunes. There’s a muddied, off-beat swing to the bluesy numbers on Safe As Milk that carried a sound beholden to the messy simplicity of many late-’60s garage-rock bands. This makes for an overall refined and daring package, which is what Mosshart and Hince focus on with The Kills.

Cass McCombs
On the surface, Cass McCombs doesn’t really flow with The Kills: The singer-songwriter owes more to alt-country artists than garage rockers. But much like The Kills’ music, McCombs’ two albums from last year (Wit’s End and Humor Risk) are filled with lush soundscapes made from minimal parts. The two create counter-balancing moods, with The Kills’ cold, echo-filled atmospherics and McCombs’ warm, delicate ambience forming a musical ying and yang.