A good sign that a band is on a creative hot streak is the amount of music they release outside of their albums. As the B-sides and rarities collection Little Bastards shows, Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart were barely keeping up with their muse during their first decade as the Kills. Named for the Roland 880 sequencer/drum machine that gave the duo's early work its signature throb, Little Bastards is an apt description of these stray songs that deserve more love. The collection focuses on the especially prolific No Wow and Midnight Boom eras, reflecting how the Kills' horizons were expanding and what made them special in the first place. "Passion Is Accurate," from 2005's Run Home Slow EP, is an archetypal Kills song: Jagged riffs are juxtaposed with a low-slung electro rhythm, while Hince and Mosshart's unison vocals are casually commanding. The tick-tick of Little Bastard itself is the first thing listeners hear on "Superpowerless," the Last Day of Magic B-side that distills Midnight Boom's neon collages of rock, hip-hop and electro pop. There are plenty of reminders of just how wide the duo's musical range is -- the surfy guitars and ultra-tinny beats of "Night Train" and the starkly poignant ballad "London Hates You" both come from the Midnight Boom sessions -- but even more of Mosshart's gifts as a singer. She's appealingly loose on "Magazine," the strummy B-side of Love Is a Deserter, and indomitable on "Raise Me," a previously unreleased Midnight Boom demo. Her talents may shine even brighter on Little Bastards' plentiful covers, where her versatility makes it possible for her and Hince to pay homage to wildly different artists. On their versions of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" and Howlin' Wolf's "Fourty Four," Mosshart has the attitude and lung power to inhabit these songs confidently. However, she's just as genuine delivering the gorgeously wounded melody of "I Call It Art," a cover of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's "Le Chanson de Slogan." Other standouts include their cover of Dock Boggs' "Sugar Baby," which takes the song out of the mountains with buzzsaw guitars and narcotized vocals, and "The Search for Cherry Red," a sparse but loving homage to Jonathan Fire*Eater. While it's one of the collection's earliest recordings, it shows that Hince and Mosshart knew what they were doing from the start. Not only does Little Bastards get at everything that makes the Kills equally enduring and inventive, it's a lot of fun, too.