The Kills began making a name for themselves with 2003's critically acclaimed Keep On Your Mean Side. Love Is A Deserter is the second single from the follow up album, No Wow.

The Kills are VV (Alison Mosshart - vocals), and Hotel (Jamie Hince - vocals/guitar), with a drum machine as a guest member. Their music is renowned for being dirty, dark, and bluesey, and Love Is A Deserter certainly conforms to this formula. Vocal duty is still shared between VV and Hotel as they seem to sing over each other in competition for rights to the microphone.

Love Is a Deserter, however, is missing something: Hotel's feral guitar sounds as if trapped in a cage, and fights through the whole song to break out and run rampant, but, sadly, never does. The song is void of the vicious, infectious, rabid bite that we have come expect from The Kills, lacking any real hooks that came by the dozen on songs like Cat Claw from Keep On Your Mean Side. Minor quibbles though as we welcome The Kills' wild blues back to our CD players.