The Dead Weather: Side project of White Stripes' Jack White plays furious blues

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When singer Alison Mosshart told her Kills band member about her side project, The Dead Weather, she summarized the effort this way. "Whoops," she recalled telling The Kills' Jamie Hince. "We recorded an album."

The Dead Weather is a rock band that wasn't expected to make an album, let alone tour to support one, but you can see the band at The Depot on Aug. 18 performing songs from its debut album, "Horehound."

It is yet another side project for Jack White, the busy, enigmatic frontman of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. He plays drums and sings occasionally for The Dead Weather, preferring to let his other band members share the spotlight --but his raw, unharnessed talent is inescapable, and the music is fierce and resonant.

Despite the music's energy and fury, the band is a side project for everyone involved. Mosshart, after all, is best known as singer and guitarist for the British rock band The Kills. Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age plays guitar, and Jack Lawrence, bassist for The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes, joins White in the quartet.

How the project began, Mosshart recalls, is that she and the others joined White in his Nashville studio in January to jam, and that jam turned into nearly three weeks of songwriting. "The music dictated what we became," she said. "It was such a cool accident. Nothing was premeditated. Nothing was forced."

The 11 tracks, including one obscure Bob Dylan "Street-Legal" cover, reveal a powerful band that combines the best of the others' projects. Lawrence shows the steady rhythm he developed while working alongside White on The Raconteurs. Fertita's fuzzy stoner riffs add sludge and heaviness to the bluesy grooves. White is at ease switching tempos on drums, and his ragged tenor adds depth to Mosshart's sultry, deep vocals:

Stand up like a man

You better learn to shake hands

Look me in the eye now

Treat me like your mother

White has a reputation for being a taskmaster in the studio, but Mosshart said The Dead Weather is a band of equals. "I usually don't like democracy in my art," she said. "But everyone was on the same wavelength. It was easy. We got along brilliantly. It was a democracy."

After the quick recording session, the band let others hear the finished product. "When it was done, people got excited about it," Mosshart said.

The band announced itself in March, released "Horehound" in July and now is playing Salt Lake City as part of a small national tour. "We want to keep going," Mosshart said of The Dead Weather. "We've already started working on the next album."

But The Dead Weather doesn't mean that the White Stripes, the Queens of the Stone Age, The Kills, The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes are dead. Each musician now knows that they can work on different projects at the same time, and Mosshart claimed that her side project has added life to her regular gig.

"It's making The Kills more exciting," Mosshart said. "I've never been in two bands before. Anything new brings a new energy, which will carry on."

As The Dead Weather song "Rocking Horse" goes:

I drank some dirty water

Shook evil hands

I've done some bad things

And they get easier to do