Trans-continental garage rockers the Kills play Neumos tonight, along with the Horrors and Magic Wands (show info here), and today Stranger contributor Dagmar Sieglinde files this interview with the band's Jamie Hince (pictured, right):

Was your family supportive of you when you were a kid and teenager getting into music?

Jamie Hince: My parents were quite formal. I think they thought it was a phase. At that point it was a pretty sketchy career to go into. Nowadays it’s quite a legitimate job, I think. They were concerned and I think they would have been much happier if I’d taken an easier route, something academic. But they’ve always been supportive.

Did you get to see a lot of shows when you were younger?

Not really. There wasn’t any band that passed anywhere near where we lived. We were out in the middle of nowhere really. I’d kind of develop a fascination with a band. It was like another world because I couldn’t get to see bands. There was so much mystery, mythology and iconography about all bands. Most of the bands I got into I didn’t hear about them until they’d already broken up. It was always this kind of incredible chalice for me. The minute I left home I went in search of that mystery. It wasn’t something I took for granted at all. It was incredible if I got to see band. The first time I went to a show I was absolutely blown away. I didn’t go to my first show until I was 14 or 15 and that was it for me. Without my parents noticing I went on the train, pretending I was going out with friends in the village, and I went to London to see the Fall.

Was that the first type of music you bought, the Fall?

That was the kind of music I was into. My sister is a couple years older than me so it was from her friends coming round playing all this modern music and northern soul. I started listening to punk music. One of my sister’s friends stopped being a punk and gave me all her records. I used to hitchhike into the nearest town and I’d go to the record shop, look through the records and I used to buy records on the strength of the record sleeves. I think that visual element was important to me because that was how I came across music, by the look of the records.

Do you still go to shows?

Yeah, but it’s hard when you’re on tour. We’re on tour with two of my favorite bands, Magic Wands and the Horrors so I get to see them every night. We had a day off yesterday and I went to see Mogwai.

More after the jump

In this week's Data Breaker, Dave Segal has a couple options for you, including Broken Disco 2.0 at Chop Suey with Jeff Samuel, Lusin, Pezzner, Sweet Beats, Kadeeja Streets, Suntzu Sound, Kid Hops and Adlib:

This month's Broken Disco hearts the 206's deep pool of techno talent—so deep it extends to Berlin, where ex—Seattle resident Jeff Samuel now operates. The world-class DJ/producer headlines a bill larded with a surplus of skillful rhythm technicians.

I've written plenty about Lusine (aka Jeff McIlwain) in this space; suffice it to say that he consistently produces excellent, vividly detailed work, whether in the techno, IDM, or ambient veins (he'll be focusing on the former for Broken Disco). He's nearly done with his next album for Ghostly International, the follow-up to the melodically beautiful, rhythmically sophisticated Serial Hodgepodge, its remix counterpart Podgelism, and the ambient opus Language Barrier. Besides this show, Lusine's spring will be, uh, very eventful, with appearances at elite fests Movement (Detroit), MUTEK (Montreal), and Sónar (Barcelona).

And here's what this week's Up & Comings have to offer:

Old Time Relijun
Old Time Relijun are an anarchic, apocalyptic revel (no coincidence that their frontman's last name is Dionyso), a combustible freak-out of free jazz and primal rock set to lyrics about the always-imminent end times (no coincidence about the band's name, either). Arrington de Dionyso plays strangled guitar and a squawking bass clarinet that sounds like either a traffic jam or an angry flock of geese; he growls and howls and throat-sings in a demonic croak. Through all the chaos, his band churns out some seriously intoxicating and insane grooves. This will be their only Seattle show of 2009. (Comet, 922 E Pike St, 322-9272. 9 pm, $8, 21+.) ERIC GRANDY

The Abodox, the Curious Mystery, Lonesome Shack
(Sunset) Seattle K Records signees the Curious Mystery are the quartet of Shana Cleveland, Nicolas Gonzalez, Faustine B. Hudson, and Bradford Button. Tonight the foursome celebrate the release of their debut full-length, Rotting Slowly. It is an aptly titled album, sluggishly paced, full of cowboy-junkie country, psychedelic instrumental drones, and Beach House—style slowcore, all combined in songs that regularly ramble past the five-minute mark, whether they demand the length or not, often not building momentum so much as gradually drifting to rest. The hour-long album's overall somnolence is alleviated by Cleveland's sweet and slightly raspy singing (Gonzalez's vocal turns are less compelling), as well as Hudson's occasionally raucous drumming, which at live shows is apparently pretty damn ferocious. ERIC GRANDY

Manchester Orchestra, Fun, Audrye Sessions, Winston Audio
(El Corazón) Fun are a new project featuring Andrew Dost of Anathallo, Jack Antonoff of Drive-Thru Records' Steel Train, and Nate Ruess of the Format. I have liked exactly one of those bands, Anathallo, and that's the one that Fun sound least like. So. Whatever. But! To Fun's credit, the trio have done their damnedest to not be just another pop act. Their first single, "At Least I'm Not as Sad (as I Used to Be)" is a lighthearted take on a vintage Elton John track. It evolves into some island-vibed, steel-drummed party track you could hear in Disneyland's Tiki Room, and eventually wraps up by sounding like a vaudevillian version of Queen's epic "Bohemian Rhapsody." It'll either amaze or confuse the hell out of you. MEGAN SELING

Taylor Swift, Kellie Pickler
(KeyArena) What were you doing when you were 19? Getting stoned and listening to Physical Graffiti? Getting stoned and listening to Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)? Getting stoned and listening to Merriweather Post Pavilion? Well, 19-year-old Taylor Swift is selling out arenas on a national tour in support of her best-selling second album, the 13-track Fearless, of which an astounding 11 have hit the Billboard Hot 100. She writes her own songs, she plays her own guitars, and she keeps her clothes on. Even if you don't respond to the music—glossy country-pop of the first order, for what that's worth—you've gotta respect the girl. DAVID SCHMADER

The Kills, the Horrors, Magic Wands
(Neumos) Recently, a friend was raving to me about the new Horrors single, "Sea Within a Sea," saying that it would totally win me over to this band that I'd previously dismissed as little more than hair, eyeliner, and a phoned-in Chris Cunningham video. And what do you know? The song is truly great, and a promising change of course for the band, dispensing with their old, screechy goth punk for a Joy Division melancholia and a glossed-up, spaced-out Suicide-al motorik groove that goes and grows and glows darkly for eight whole minutes, guitars and vocals smeared with reverb, organs shuddering and evaporating rather than stabbing you in the face, keyboard arpeggios fluttering toward the end, bass and drums interlocking like clockwork. I don't know what these guys did to the Horrors, but I sincerely hope they keep it up. ERIC GRANDY

Night Beats, the Slags, Doctor Doctor
(Blue Moon) This is important: Unlike every other band in the universe, Night Beats, in my estimation, are not intolerable when they jam. They sound astonishingly like a '60s garage band playing on a beat-up record player that's been placed at the bottom of an oil drum, and there's something about the sleazy guitar riffs crashing around from somewhere deep down there, frolicking with the go-go drumbeats, that sounds just about perfect to me. It's the soundtrack to a dirty, drunken striptease, and I wish it would go on forever. PAUL CONSTANT

Listen to Night Beats via MySpace.

There are even more shows to be found in our calendar. Godspeed and good luck.