Following last week’s performance on Letterman, a break in the Dead Weather begins as Alison Mosshart preps a new album with Kills partner Jamie “Hotel” Hince, LJ joins the Greenhornes for their first LP in 5 years, Dean Fertita hits the road with Josh Homme’s QOTSA, and Jack White plots his next 50 or so Third Man Records releases. As I pondered imminent new music from members of our favorite supergroup of the past 16 months, however, it occurred that Mosshart’s evolution from leader of Floridian pop-punk outfit Discount (she “didn’t make up the name”) to co-conspirator in a London art-rock duo to stealing Jack White’s spotlight has gone woefully underappreciated around here.

Though the one-sheet narrative of Mosshart moving from Gainesville, FL to London for an unknown Hince collaboration has been making the rounds since the Kills’ 2003 debut, Keep on Your Mean Side, little has been noted about her first group, Discount, including their 3 LPs and countless EP/7” releases. Let’s get the ball rolling with a few early pop-punk covers of Billy Bragg and R.E.M., 2 originals, and a live video from Mosshart and Discount below:

Alison Mosshart has found some time in her busy schedule touring with the Dead Weather and recording the next Kills album to lay down a version of Velvet Underground classic “Pale Blue Eyes” with Kills partner Jamie Hince. Though Mosshart’s menacing voice sounds better than ever here and undoubtedly does Lou Reed’s original forlorn vocal justice, Hince’s nuanced electric guitar chops are what truly grab me the most about this cover.

Download the Kills’ take on the VU’s timeless 1969 tune for Levi’s here and stream it below:

With only one more week left to go on their spring tour (plus a few summer festival gigs), at least two members of the Dead Weather are gearing up to pivot their attention back to their respective pre-Jack White bands. We mentioned “Little” Jack Lawrence’s forthcoming album with Greenhornes  — the first record from the Cincinnati-based trio since drummer Patrick Keeler and LJ joined the Raconteurs in ‘05 — and now DW frontwoman Alison Mosshart has all but finished the next Kills record for a hopeful summer release.

Kills co-conspirator Jamie Hince and Mosshart are “three quarters of the way finished with the [fourth] record,” according to an interview with BBC 6Music. “I’m going to go back after this tour and finish it,” Mosshart explained.

As for the tentative release schedule, Mosshart elaborated in a separate Q&A with the Las Vegas Sun:

David Bowie, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, and (future reality show star?) Lily Allen, have all chimed in on the proposed closing of the BBC’s beloved 6Music radio station. But that trio of headline-ready British music stars only represent a small portion of Google Trends-worthy artists ready to campaign for this great cause.

“When I was a lot younger radio used to be the place I’d go to find new music and I feel like I would find it everywhere on the dial,” wrote Noah Lennox of Panda Bear/Animal Collective in a message from Domino Records on Monday morning. “Since then it seems like less and less stations are willing to or have the means to play new music. I miss unpredictable radio. Please support these guys…”

Lennox and his fellow Domino recording artists have banded together in support of O’Brien’s plea for fans to write the BBC Trust and join Jon Morter’s follow-up to his successful RATM Facebook campaign.

The Dead Weather/Kills’ Alison Mosshart makes an even more impassioned plea:

Please don’t leave us musicians and music lovers with such a void. We need BBC6. It is the only radio station we all listen too, and seemingly, the only station that plays anything worth listening too.

I realize that laptops are a staple of the rock star gig bag nowadays (save for Jack White’s), but aren’t they a bit too precarious to be sitting around next to musicians and their supermodel girlfriends? The Mirror reports that Jamie Hince recorded six new Kills songs on his laptop and amid a fight with his girlfriend, Kate Moss, she did to his laptop what Naomi Campbell does to cell phones.

“Kate grabbed his bag and hurled it into the pool,” a source says. “Unfortunately it contained his laptop, BlackBerry and personal diary.” Hince tried to resuscitate the hard drive, but the songs and his Blackberry were lost in the row. Only the diary was saved, which is good to hear because he’ll have a lot to write about! Here’s a suggestion for his first entry: If I record on a 400-pound Studer A80, it is much harder to throw in a pool than a MacBook.

Also, Moss performed an impromptu vocal with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on Friday at a benefit concert and these pictures of the performance definitely confirm one audience member’s comment that she “really got into it.”

British tabloids have been having fun all week making up stories that force the stars in said fake story to speak out, creating a whole new article! Today, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart debunked a report by The Sun that she and Dead Weather drummer Jack White got into a physical brawl after a day of drinking in New York. Some gossip rags were even reporting that White punched Mosshart.

“I don’t usually bother responding to ridiculous fabricated tabloid rumours, but this one is particularly grotesque,” Mosshart told NME (whom rightfully put the original story in their “Gossip” section). “The stories circulating from a UK tabloid of a ‘fist fight’, or Jack punching me, or the two of us ‘being at each others throats’ are untrue.”

In other news, Bat Boy has yet to respond to rumors he was captured by the FBI.

There’s been a bit of drama surrounding The Kills recently, but this week’s brief disappearance of guitarist and Kate Moss boyfriend Jamie Hince has brought it to a whole new level.

At Monday night’s show at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, Hince got violent with a fan that was allegedly giving him the two-fingered salute. In fact, Selt-Titled Mag’s associate editor Aaron Richter actually helped boost the soon-to-be victim onto the stage, thinking that Hince was just being playful. Hince then threw the guy against a stack of amps and somehow knocked him out before throwing the unconscious fan back into the crowd. For more details, click here.

Only two days later, Hince mysteriously went missing after the band’s gig in Montreal. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but the Daily Mail reports singer Alison Mosshart was so concerned about her bandmate that she posted a worried message on Facebook, asking for help finding Hince before their scheduled gig in Toronto that night. Hince did reportedly show up for the set.