New Dead Weather LP 'half done'

By Greg Cochrane
Newsbeat music reporter

Alison Mosshart, lead singer with The Dead Weather, has confirmed a second album from the band is "halfway done".

The project, with Mosshart singing and The White Stripes' Jack White drumming, released their debut album Horehound earlier this year.

Up until now it was not confirmed as to whether the band would continue beyond 2009.

Mosshart said: "In between now and Christmas I'm going to go back to Nashville [White's home] at some point.

"I think I'll spend most of December in America and finish the second record. So there will be more."

New material

The singer, who also fronts London-based pairing The Kills alongside Jamie Hince, added: "It's a kind of endless train of things which keep coming up. So I suppose next year is going to look a lot like this year.

"We kind of wrote 15 songs in three days. We had three days off at one point which we didn't expect."

"They [the songs] sound great. I really like them. We've been playing three or four of them on stage so they keep changing all the time.

"The boys are extremely quick but the four that we do have I'm sure are on YouTube. I'm sure they're everywhere."

Commenting on the prolific speed at which the foursome write (Mosshart and White are joined by Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita) she said: "I love it. I don't think we could do this if the four of us in a room didn't move so fast because the four of us have other stuff going on.

"It's all really spur of the moment."

She also took time to praise the skills of The White Stripes man, who also stars and directed the video for new single I Cut Like A Buffalo.

"He's [Jack White] a man with a billion ideas every single day. He works really hard and rarely sleeps.

"It'd be great if there was a day with 48 hours instead of 24 for him I'm sure. It's pretty incredible to be around."

During 2009 they've taken in a huge world tour including a surprise guest appearance on Glastonbury's Park Stage in June.

It's a 12-month period that will conclude with a small clutch of UK shows beginning in Manchester on 19 October.

"The last year has been incredible," she said. "I never knew it was going to go like this. We never planned to be a band. Certainly I didn't think we'd be so busy and that things would go so well."