Hear the Kills’ Bluesy Cover of Rihanna’s ‘Desperado’
The Kills‘ guitarist Jamie Hince and singer Alison Mosshart delivered a bluesy, dust-blown live cover of Rihanna‘s Anti cut “Desperado” during an appearance on Sirius XM’s indie-rock station Sirius XMU.
Mosshart’s smoky croon offers a more sinister feel of the lyrics (“If you want, we can be runaways/ Running from any sight of love”), over a metronomic tapping foot and Hince’s stark, buzzing acoustic guitar. Hince told Rolling Stone that “R&B, dancehall, electronic and hip-hop are genres that are really pushing the limits,” possibly explaining the indie rock band’s fascination with the pop star.
Last week, the Kills released Ash & Ice, their fifth studio album – and first since 2011’s Blood Pressures. Hince said aimed to revitalize the modern electric guitar on this LP: “Most bands are just tributes to the 1970s or the Nineties,” he said. “I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn’t retrospective.”
Hince said he looked to modern hip-hop production in order to revamp his own approach to beat-making. “It’s amazing looking at bass-drum patterns or drum-machine programming from, like, Pusha T,” he said. “Those are sounds and influences that are new to this record. I’ve always been a big fan of Pusha’s rhythms, but this time around I was looking at the rhythms a bit differently.”