The Kills write a "ton of songs" to start every album.
The ‘DNA’ band try to have a new sound on each of their records, and singer Alison Mosshart says most of their hits come from the ideas she and writing partner Jamie Hince bounce off each other, rather than the tracks they write on their own.
She said: "We are searching for The Thing every time we go into the studio, so we start by writing a ton of songs, we do that for a couple of months, we just lock ourselves away and write.
"Something I’ll do will really inspire Jamie and something he will do will really inspire me. Those are the songs which typically make the record, and the rest of them disappear somewhere, and that’s how a new direction is formed. I think most songs start as acoustic songs, they’re pretty simple basic melodies and things then we just try to take them in a totally different direction."
Alison, 33, also said the band never plan ahead and record their albums whenever they feel ready, rather than working to a schedule.
She added in an interview with Consequenceofsound.net: "We don’t plan ahead. We don’t know what we’re doing a week from now, we don’t know when we’re doing another record.
"Everything is just like, when something occurs to us and feels right we do it. And we live by that. When we started we never made a plan to be a band for ten years, you don’t think like that.
"We’re always trying to push ourselves in another different direction each time and not repeat ourselves, an we’re not really up on what people like or what they’re ready for, we just make something that we love and give it to the world and hope they love it too."