The Dead Weather were formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 2009. Consisting of The White Stripes' Jack White in drums, The Kills' Alison Mosshart in vocal, The Raconteurs' Jack Lawrence in bass and Queens of the Stone Age's Dean Fertita in guitar, they debuted their performance in a private party at the headquarters of the Third Man Records.

They got together when doing an impromptu jam at the Third Man studios. The session was then followed by two and a half weeks of song writing and recording. A couple of songs were created from the session and they decided to debut a full-length album as a side project.

"Horehound" was released in June 2009 and reached No. 6 on Billboard Hot 200. Led by chart-busting single "Hang You From the Heavens", the album was followed by the release of a short film documentary called Full Flash Blank which was co-directed by Jack and featured the band's exclusive interview of performances.

A year after that, they dropped a sophomore set called "Sea of Cowards". Jack explained premise behind the title, "[It] refers to the way the internet allows people to spit venom and knock people in a cowardly way using fake names. It seems to me that people aren't teaching this generation anything about responsibility." It charted one spot higher than its predecessor, peaking at No. 5 on the U.S. albums chart.