Alison "VV" Mosshart of the United Kingdom minimalist experimental duo The Kills [ tickets ] is flattered when anyone compares her band to Andy Warhol's late '60s movement.

The Florida-born singer is dramatically inspired by the era, and says she's read an autobiography of Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick so many times that she knows it by heart. As a matter of fact, it was the book that brought her together with partner Jamie "Hotel" Hince.

"Edie Sedgwick is the girl that pretty much bonded Jamie and I. One of the first conversations we ever had, I walked into his room and I saw that he had the Edie Sedgwick biography. I was like, 'I've read that book 11 times.' He had probably read it seven or eight times. We had memorized the book. It was like the bible," she said via telephone from Sheffield, England, where her band was performing.

"We are both massively into the Warhol scene and the Velvet Underground. It just seems like art, music and fashion and film were all hand in hand. They were all riding the same wave. You can't have a conversation about the Velvet Underground without talking about Edie Sedgwick, without talking about pop art movement, without talking about Allen Ginsburg, just branching out into every genre of art. We were both kind of so romanticizing a time when everything like that was going on. It was just so vital and creative. The creativity couldn't be contained. It just absolutely crossed all over the place."

Mosshart--who now lives in the United Kingdom--and Hince took those inspirations and have packaged them into their second full-length album, "No Wow," due out March 8 on Rough Trade/RCA Records.

Mosshart talked with liveDaily about the recording and writing of "No Wow," her "secret" life as a filmmaker and her musical roots.

I read that you wrote "No Wow" in seclusion in Benton Harbor, MI. How did you end up in the town?

We were trying to go in a studio in France called Blackbox. Jamie had produced a band's record there, two months prior to when we went to Benton Harbor. They had this mixing desk that he absolutely fell in love with. It's called the Flickinger. They only made like about 23 of them in the early '70s. They're quite freaky looking desks. They're really cool and they sound amazing. They were made in Michigan, around Benton Harbor actually, maybe a couple hours away. We tried to book time [at Blackbox] because he was really excited about this desk because it was really vibey and it was cool. We couldn't get time. So, he kind of went on and tried to seek out any other places that have one, which is quite rare because there aren't really any left that work.

We'd heard about this one that Sly Stone had made. It was legendary. It was absolutely cursed. When Sly Stone got his desk delivered, it was the day that the company went bankrupt because he was so demanding. He basically had all the people from Flickinger come over and put it in to his house and hook it up and everything. He ended up holding them hostage with guns and everything, not letting them leave. He was trying to make them make it levitate and made them paint it in UV paint so he could see his cocaine on it. He basically drove the people mad. They all had nervous breakdowns and quit. The company went under. It was bankrupt from him. I don't know if he ever paid for it. But they were too frightened to go back there because it was a hostage situation.

There's a lot of stories about this desk and all the things that happened. It's an amazing design. It's really fantastic. There's a beautiful light board on it. It's almost like disco lights. They run up and down and change colors. It's really weird. Anyway, we found out that this desk was still around. It had been revamped and put back together and it was working. We found it in a studio in Benton Harbor, MI. Two kids found pieces of it and tracked it down. They had heard the story as well. They managed to get it. They're both really electronics wizards. They tried to locate the people that bailed on the whole thing to help them get it working again. Tried for about a year and the phone was just hung up on them every single time. They said, "I don't want remember it. I don't want to see it. I don't want to talk about it. It f----n' ruined my life." Eventually, they did manage to get the guy who designed the desk down to help do it. We went there because of the desk and it turned out to be an amazing place to go for so many other reasons than that.

What were some of the other reasons?

We stayed there for a month. We wrote the record in about three-and-a-half weeks. It was great because Benton Harbor is in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing there at all. You just walk down the street for 15 or 20 minutes and you don't see a pane of glass anywhere. It's a ghost town, really. It was perfect, because we never left the building. We just stayed and got really focused and lost our minds a bit and wrote a record really quickly.

How did you and Jamie meet?

I was in another band since I was 14. We met when I was 17 or 18. I was touring in England, and I'd go there a couple times a year. I'd always stay in the apartment below his apartment. I used to hear someone playing guitar up there. I was absolutely fascinated. I used to just lay on the couch downstairs and try to fall asleep listening to this music, which I thought was amazing. I had been in this band that I was in for so long. I was kind of feeling that it was really directionless and I didn't like the music and I couldn't play the guitar. I was so inspired by what he was playing outside of his window. I ended up meeting him at the end of the street. It took me a really long time for to have the courage to talk to him. We eventually did talk and we never kind of shut up after that. We were kind of living really parallel lives 4,000 miles away. We were both really dissatisfied with our social scenes and what people were doing. We were both really secretive. We were both doing bands, but secretly we were making films and we were writing tons and making other music and not showing anybody any of these things. When we met each other, we were like, "That's the person I want to share it with." That's what happened. Just then, we started to send these packages to each other. That's how we got to know each other--through the mail and on the phone. All of a sudden, it was like, "This [is] brilliant. I can share this art with someone. We should work together. We should do something."

We never decided to be a band. That just kind of fell in our lap. We would just hang out in his room and play music, recording stuff and building tape machines and making microphones. We didn't have any money, so we were just pillaging skips and getting cables and soldering things together. We were terrible at it. I don't think we ever fixed anything. I just think we broke everything worse. We really got to know each other through that.

What is the songwriting process like with The Kills [ tickets ]?

That's the great thing about this band is that there is no process. We do everything every different way. Sometimes you write the whole song. Sometimes I write the whole song. Sometimes we're in different parts of the building and one person writes one half of the song and goes to the other person and says, "I just can't finish this." He's like, "Well, I've got that. Here's the other part." Then we string it together and it works perfectly. It's like psychic working. Sometimes he'll have music and I'll sit down and listen to it and I'll find it so exciting that I'll fill a page with words and it's over with and it's done. We write quite quickly. All of our favorite songs were written in 10 or 15 minutes anyway, with not that much thought involved.

Because we're a two-piece and we're kind of deconstructing music, it's like we're trying to only have what needs to be there. It's kind of deconstructed all around. We try to do things without thinking. We try and do things really instinctually and not mess it up by over analyzing. I don't know; I think that's sort of the problem with music: people are creative for an hour and then they sit in front of a computer for five hours changing all of that. I don't find it beautiful. I don't find it passionate. I find it really, really boring, like school. It's not the way either of us works. So it's great. It's all quite like, "Bang." We spend 80 percent of the time when we're writing music just sitting there talking to each other. Not even playing guitars, not doing anything. Just trying to [inspire] the other person until something comes out of us.

You've been playing music for quite awhile. Is that something you've always wanted to do?

I guess so. I was never one of those kids who knew what I wanted to do or thought about it or worried about it. I just kind of always did it. When I was a kid, I just wrote songs all the time--not with instruments at all. I just sang all the time and just loved to write so much. When I was 14, I started my first band. I've been touring since then and I haven't stopped, not for even, like, half of a year. It just kind of suits me perfectly. I'm just one of those people that can't stand to be in one place too long. I like having my friends scattered throughout the universe. Just kind of going to every place and having every place feel like home. It's so fantastic. I feel so lucky. I've been everywhere. It's awesome. I have millions of stories and thousands of books. I've written about all these things. I love that. I don't think I'd trade it for any other kind of job where I'd have to stay somewhere.

It sounds so satisfying.

It is satisfying. It's also one of the most stressful things you can do and one of the most tiring things you can do--and probably shortens your life span quite considerably. It's just, like, it's a really exhausting thing to be on the road all of the time. At the same time, there's nothing that's more fun. School drove me nuts. Living at home made me nuts. All those things caused me total panic attacks and really bad health. I'd get really weird and have to leave. Then I'd be great. I'd be better. I'd be functioning. I'd be awake. I'd be happy. I think it was sort of a sign.

Was your family musical?

No, not at all. My grandfather, he played violin, which I only heard him play once. That's the only family member I can think of who's musical. My cousin, he's a few years younger than me, all of a sudden he has taught himself to play every single instrument I can think of. It's kind of weird, because no one in my family is musical at all. It's quite cool.

You mentioned that you branched out into film as well. Is there anything coming up that we can see?

I really want to make films. I did it a lot before I moved over [from the United States to the United Kingdom]. I moved over and I didn't have any money, so I didn't have any resources like cameras, TVs, VCRs or anything to do any of that kind of stuff. Since I've been here, that's slowly coming back into the picture. We made a film really recently that's going to come with the record. It's like a 50-minute film that, for the most part, we shot all of. Our friend Morgan shot some interview stuff and it's all edited together. It's kind of like a documentary of the first tour we ever went on, and it goes all the way until the last show of our last record. I'm excited about that. I want to do more stuff. I absolutely love the medium.

You're playing at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, TX, in March. What are you looking forward to the most?

I don't know yet. I don't know anything about the festival. I've never been to any American festival before except for CMJ, which I [wouldn't] really qualify as a festival. It just felt like a group playing a gig in a club, and it was really kind of scatterbrained. People were just walking all over the town with festivals. We played so many festivals in Europe and the U.K. and they're held in grounds. You definitely know it's a festival. It's definitely written all over it. I'm looking forward the most to seeing what it's like. I don't know what it's like. I heard that everybody who goes to South by Southwest has a list of bands they're going to see and that they're really excited. But they missed every single band they wanted to see. They're just walking from one place to another. That seems to be the opinion of everyone who goes there. I know my way around Austin, so I think I'll be luckier.