Attack & Release grew out of what was supposed to be a collaboration between the band — singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney — and the late Ike Turner, who died on December 12. Brought in to produce, Danger Mouse adds to the disc’s mystique. There are no overt traces of Turner on the album, and there’s nothing in the way of a hip-hop beat to suggest that Danger Mouse fiddled with the band’s rough-and-ready approach. But rather than banging out hot and sweaty riff after hot and sweaty riff, Attack & Release opens with a slow, moody crooner (“All You Ever Wanted”) built on a foundation of acoustic guitar and a subtle beat with an eerie vibrato guitar haunting Auerbach’s voice like a ghost. Before it’s over, the song builds to a big, organ-filled climax and Auerbach’s electric starts humming, as though in wait for the Zeppelin-style hook that anchors the next track, “I Got Mine.” Elsewhere, Auerbach adds some backwoods banjo to “Psychotic Girl,” an uneasy track embellished with a queasy choir, tinkling piano, and an effects-laden slide solo that reflects Danger’s deft hand with tone and texture. So does the murky “Remember When (Side A),” which has spare background vocals by bluegrass singer Jessica Lea Mayfield. Flute, of all things, turns up next to Auerbach’s snaky guitar line in “Same Old Thing.” The disc ends on a soulful note with “Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be” — one of the few tunes here that might have been written with Ike Turner in mind.

The Kills (who play the Paradise on April 30) come at the blues from a very different angle from that taken by unabashed enthusiasts like the Black Keys or a band on a mission like the Gossip. This is especially true on Midnight Boom (Domino). For VV and Hotel, the blues, like punk, is more about a mood — a dark, foreboding mood — and an attitude than a particular riff. Theirs is music with roots in Exile and the Velvets but also Royal Trux and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Like Bonnie-and-Clyde rebels, they revel in danger and romance — “I want you to be crazy cuz you’re boring baby when you’re straight,” VV sings on “Cheap and Cheerful,” an electro-punk blooze rocker with programmed percussion and little more than a pulsing bass sound courtesy of Spank Rock’s XXXchange, who produces.

XXXchange lends a hand on three more, but even without him the Kills delve into sampling, creating a rhythm track out of a dial tone on the opening vocal duet, “U.R.A. Fever.” It isn’t until halfway into the disc, on the relatively raucous “Last Day of Magic” and the overdriven “Hook and Line,” that these Kills resemble the guitar-driven garage-punk outfit that garnered comparisons to the White Stripes when Rough Trade released Keep on Your Mean Side in 2003. Of course, that’s part of what sustains the lasting power of the blues: like romance itself, its essence is intangible. The Gossip get right up in your face, the Kills peer out coyly from behind dark sunglasses — but it’s not which notes they play, it’s how they play them.

THE KILLS | Paradise, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | April 30 | 617.562.8800