The Kills

“Cheap and Cheerful“
from the album Midnight Boom
2007
iTunes

For their third album, the Kills found an obscure source of inspiration: Pizza Pizza Daddy-O, a Sixties documentary about inner-city schools. After listening to the spunky playground tunes featured in the film, the duo’s Florida-bred singer Alison Mosshart and British guitarist Jamie Hince built new tracks around the same sing-song rhythms. Their dark, sexy electro-rock sounds sharper and more memorable as a result: “Sour Cherry” is syncopated ear-candy built on click-clack percussion, drum-machine beats and hand claps, and “U.R.A. Fever” rides throbbing synths that suggest a more D.I.Y. Nine Inch Nails. Though Mosshart’s shadowy lyrics about white drugs and bad mornings are tough to parse, her minor-key coos and PJ Harvey-style yelps seem carefully crafted — especially on “Cheap and Cheerful.“ A bass-pumping dance tune that could light up hipster dance parties everywhere, its chorus sounds like something a goth cheerleader would chant: “I want you to be crazy / ‘coz you’re boring baby when you’re straight.”