When you only have five studio albums under your belt, releasing a best of is a bit presumptuous. Probably aware of this, American Alison Mosshart and Englishman Jamie Hince opted instead for a compilation of B-sides and rarities. In this great rattle bag of material dating from between 2002 and 2009, the sexiest duo on planet rock'n'roll even slipped a few 360° covers. Very well-chosen covers of songs by Howlin' Wolf (Forty Four), Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (I Put a Spell on You), Dock Boggs (Sugar Baby) and Serge Gainsbourg (I call it Art aka La Chanson de Slogan) all spice up Little Bastards. This name is in fact a nod to the Roland 880, the favourite instrument of the duo, who nicknamed it Little Bastard. “It [...] isn’t strictly a drum machine," explains Hince. "It’s a sequencer, and an eight-track recorder, with its own drum machine built in, and that’s what we’d record all our beats on”. This minimalist sound is a key part of the DNA of The Kills, made up of stripped-down but incandescent guitars and the sounds of vintage drum machines that always hit their mark. Mosshart's voice makes this potion of raw, unadorned synthetic rock'n'roll even more venomous. Like on Raise Me, a beautiful and unreleased bluesy demo from the Midnight Boom period, or the cataclysmic version of Love is a Deserter recorded during an XFM radio session. All of this has obviously been remastered, just to make the experience even more powerful. In short, even in this hour-long collection taken from the bottom of the desk drawer, The Kills... kill! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz