Jamie Hince and his musical partner Alison Mosshart believe that your art is something you live, rather than something you merely do. Therefore, the conventional approach to recording an album - write some songs a bit like your last songs, book flashy studio and ear candy-providing producer, be professional and get home in time for tea - is not an option for them. The Kills make music that sounds like the stripped-to-the-bone nub of the crux of the sex and death and madness at the heart of the very best rock 'n' roll. And the only way to pull that off is to put themselves through the creative, physical, financial and emotional mangle. The Kills formed in 2000 when a boy from Andover, England and a girl from Florida, USA met in a South London hotel. "It was like we'd lived parallel lives", Jamie recalls. Both had been to art college, the boy had just left a punk-pop band called Scarfo and the girl wanted to leave a punk-pop band called Discount, and both were disillusioned with the musical scenes they were part of. "We had these bedrooms on different sides of the Atlantic which were full of artworks and films and music that we'd made for no-one to listen to. We had so many things in common. It was at a time that if you spent a lot of time making art and dressing up you got beaten down for being pretentious. Everything was about being down to earth. And we both just felt this relief when we met each other." Alison was so convinced that this was the creative partner she'd always been searching for that she decamped from Florida to Jamie's flat in South London. Inspired by a mutual obsession with The Velvet Underground, '70s London and New York punk, they formed a duo called The Kills, rejected everything they'd begun to hate about being in a rock band and got themselves signed to Domino. Their fourth album, Blood Pressures, will be released around the world (excluding the U.S.A) on April 4th, and in the U.S.A on April 5th.