🎸Gene & Ashlees Alt2k Wednesday Tunes For Wednesday May 28th! 🎹 The Kills & Silversun Pickups!
On this Alt2k or Y2K Wednesday me & Ashlee pick tunes from one of our favorite 2000’s Alternative rock bands. We each pick two songs from two different albums from one band each and also pick a third bonus jam from later in the twenty teens.
Gene goes with the Kills and also three songs from three separate records. For DailyJam it’s the song Black Balloon from the 2008 album “Midnight Boom”. Followed by BonusJam the song Future Starts Slow from the follow up record 2011’s “Blood Pressures“. Finally third song Doing It To Death from the 2015 album “ Ash & Ice”.
Ashlee goes with the band Silversun Pickups going with one song from the 2006 first record “ Carnavas” picking the song Lazy Eye. Second up it’s the song Panic Switch off the 2009 follow-up album “ Swoon”. Followed by a third bonus tune from the 2015 album “ Better Nature” the song Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance).
Thanks for swinging by! Cheers! 🎸
Some additional talk about both artists and the 2000’s Alternative Music scene… ⬇️
The Kills:
Enter Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince—The Kills. They showed up like a cinematic black-and-white fever dream in the early 2000s, all raw energy, drum machines, and cigarette smoke. Their 2003 debut Keep on Your Mean Side felt like garage rock dragged through an alleyway and polished with dark lipstick. It was seductive, stripped down, and gritty in all the right places.
The Kills never tried to be slick—they were cool without caring about cool. Mosshart’s snarl and sway were electric, while Hince’s minimal-yet-menacing riffs proved that you didn’t need a full band to blow the roof off. They were a rebellion against the overproduced, over-glossed pop landscape—and they did it with swagger.
By the time No Wow dropped in 2005, they had carved out their niche: punk blues infused with noir vibes. And with Midnight Boom (2008), they got weirder and even more addictive—suddenly, their chaos had beats you could dance to. It was sexy and jagged, like a love letter written in eyeliner on a bathroom mirror.
Silversun Pickups:
Silversun Pickups—an L.A.-based band who sounded like they found Smashing Pumpkins’ secret fuzz pedal and turned it all the way up. Where The Kills were stark and sultry, Silversun Pickups were lush and emotional—like a daydream inside a distortion cloud.
Their 2006 debut Carnavas was a breakout moment. “Lazy Eye” became the indie anthem you didn’t know you needed until it hit you right in the chest. That song soared—Brian Aubert’s shaky, urgent vocals paired with Nikki Monninger’s grounding bass created this gorgeous tension. Every song felt like a journal entry set to a thunderstorm.
2009’s Swoon kept the momentum, layering on more synth, more drama, and more volume. They weren’t afraid to get cinematic—like shoegaze and alt-rock had a baby that just discovered glitter. Silversun Pickups offered a kind of emotional catharsis that was rare. You didn’t just listen—you felt it. Every swirl of feedback carried a little ache.
The Kills and Silversun Pickups were never mainstream darlings in the way Arctic Monkeys or The Strokes were—but maybe that’s why their music still feels like a secret handshake. They were part of a larger wave of alt and indie acts that shaped the underground of the 2000s—think Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio—but they brought their own flavor.
The Kills reminded us that minimal could be magnetic. Silversun Pickups reminded us that maximal could still be intimate. Together, they captured the strange, beautiful tension of the decade: gritty and grand, detached yet deeply emotional.
So whether you’re queuing them up on vinyl, digging through old iPods, or catching a reunion tour, these bands are more than nostalgia. They’re proof that the 2000s alternative scene didn’t just make noise—it made magic.