Name	Jamie Hince
Height
Naionality	American
Date of Birth
Place of Birth	United Kingdom, United States
Famous for

Mosshart was previously in Floridian punk rock band Discount, and Hince was in the British rock bands Scarfo and Blyth Power (the latter an anarcho-punk band). The duo first met when Mosshart heard Hince practicing in the hotel room above hers, and when the former groups disbanded they struck up a songwriting partnership. For months, the pair air mailed work tapes across the Atlantic; this proved to test the patience of both artists as it took days or weeks to get each other's tapes, so Mosshart moved from her Florida home under the guidance of Lauren Antonina Herbert to London.

Wanting to cut themselves off from their pasts, Mosshart and Hince considered their new project to be Year Zero in their careers. They renamed themselves "VV" and "Hotel" respectively and began writing sparse, minimalist songs together with the aid of a drum machine. In 2001 they showcased their new songs on a well received demo tape. In true punk rock fashion, however, the pair shunned approaches from major record labels. Recording as VV and Hotel, they contributed the song "Restaurant Blouse" to the compilation If the Twenty-First Century Did Not Exist, It Would Be Necessary to Invent It. Shortly after this they recorded their debut release, the Black Rooster EP, which saw release on British indie label Domino Records and was picked up for distribution by Dim Mak Records in the United States.

The record could not have been more of a departure from both artists' previous bands. It was lo-fi in both musical and aesthetic terms. The record sleeve featured photos of Mosshart and Hince taken in a photo booth rather than professional photography. Musically, the record was a sparse, lo-fi Garage rock/Blues hybrid. Though the band cites PJ Harvey, LCD Soundsystem and Royal Trux as immediate influences, the music press has largely compared them to the other boy/girl minimalist garage blues duo The White Stripes.