LOOKING for a Detroit alternative to the White Stripes and Von Bondies? Look no further than Blanche, whose track Who's To Say already has been covered by Jack and Meg White on the B-side of I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.

Led by Jack's friend Dan Miller - colleagues in the country garage band Tabernacle - and Dan's dreamy wife Tracee, the sepia-toned Blanche could have stepped out of Cold Mountain. Alternatively they are a rural Talking Heads, all sad and scary and comic in a dark, yet invitingly, beautiful way.

They trust no one, not doctors, not even each other in songs where Dan and Tracee engage in vocal jousts like sparring Shakespearean lovers, all harmony in disharmony.

Tracee brings to mind Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, and so too does the equally woozy Tabitha Tindale, one half of Long Island duo Joy Zipper, whose American Whip album finally emerges after a year in wasteful cold storage while the 13 Amp label got its act together.

Tindale and Vincent Cafiso sing hazily of drugs and love and loving drugs, of time's passage and madness too, set to the droning, disorientating, somnambulant rock once the preserve of Galaxie 500. Serge Gainsbourg would love it.

Updated: 08:42 Thursday, March 25, 2004