The Kills’ sexed-up strut rock is the kind that sounds perfect throbbing from behind a motel room door, so it’s befitting that it’s how they got their start. Alison “VV” Mosshart was on tour with her band Discount when she heard James “Hotel” Hince practicing one floor up, and the spell was cast. They recorded as VV and Hotel harsh, minimalist rock à la Suicide, a flood of come-ons and nervous guitar grooves over a drum machine, before adopting the more rockist moniker, the Kills.

The band was compared to the White Stripes (stripped-down man/woman duo) and Pretenders (though I’d say Mosshart resembles the rock side of Pat Benatar, if one has to make a comparison), but the Kills’ music was rackety, immediate, hormonal. The Kills’ early records No Wow and Keep on Your Mean Side get placed in the punk-blues category without being either. It is hotwired rock ‘n’ roll.

Popular culture caught up with the Kills by the late 2000s as their darkened, newly sophisticated groove set the mood for episodes of House and Fendi commercials. Mosshart took a hiatus from the Kills to record two albums with Jack White’s gothic Dead Weather project, which may have summoned the vampires. Songs off 2011’s Blood Pressures were used to promote True Blood and The Vampire Diaries.

It makes perfect sense. Blood Pressures is stylized, slick and just sleazy enough to soundtrack your midnight swamp orgy. “Future Starts Slow” has a genius two-note guitar riff twined up with Mosshart’s breathy annihilative cant: “You can holler / you can wail / you can blow what’s left of my right mind.” You might want to either get your fetish leathers cleaned for the show, or pop into the new Rouses for a string of garlic, depending on how you want the night to go.

The Kills play House of Blues with Jeff the Brotherhood and Hunters, Thursday, January 26, 2012, 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $22 in advance.