Third time's the charm for the Dead Weather

Sometimes, the Dead Weather's Alison Mosshart wishes she could be four people.

If she was, she might be able to tour in support of the group's third album, Dodge and Burn, which comes out Friday. She'd also have time to finish her next album with her primary band, The Kills, and tour that record, too. Plus, she'd have a couple of people left over to do things like the other clones' tour laundry.

Of course, the group's three other members — Jack White, who plays drums; guitarist Dean Fertita and bassist Jack "LJ" Lawrence — would have to be four people, too.

As it is, says Mosshart, the group's primary singer and vocalist, "we're too busy to do much with the album other than put it out. But it's better than sitting on a record. We'll probably write two more by the time we're decide to tour again."

Dodge and Burn wasn't supposed to be ready so soon. Two years ago, the group — one of many projects the prolific White runs out of Third Man Records in Nashville — announced a plan to release a series of seven-inch vinyl singles until they had recorded enough to compile them into an album.

The band released one in 2013 and another the following year. "This year, we were ready to go do another session," Fertita says. "We got in there, and we busted out eight or nine songs in a few days. So we had a record before we knew it."

That's how things go for the Dead Weather, which began in 2009 simply as a way to test White's studio space and wound up releasing its first album, Horehound, that summer. "It's easy for this band and difficult for this band, studio-wise," Lawrence says. "Difficult for us all to get together. But once we're in there, it rolls pretty fast and easy."

Together, the four create a feral rock sound built from primal blues, a fondness for heavy distortion and a willingness to let inhibitions fall by the wayside.

"For some reason, our company makes us feel free to try anything," Mosshart. "Nobody's scared to play the guitar riff they wished they could play when they were 16. And I'm not afraid to babble incoherently until I find a thread of something I want to say."

So the riffs in I Feel Love (Every Million Miles) feel like direct descendants of Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones; the cacophonous Three Dollar Hat incorporates bits of traditional folk tunes Stagger Lee and Frankie and Johnny; and Impossible Winner, an anomalous ballad in the band's rock-hard repertoire, closes Dodge and Burn with Mosshart singing against piano chords and a string quartet.

"I didn't think of that song as a Dead Weather song," says of Impossible Winner. "I just got to the studio before everyone, which is rare, because I'm usually the last one to get there. I was sitting there playing to myself, and Dean just walked in and caught me. He had me play it to him, then he started playing piano. It was like a stupid movie: LJ walks in the door and starts playing bass. Twenty minutes later, Jack gets in and starts playing with us."

Even though, as Fertita says, "this band is made to play live," that likely won't happen with Dodge and Burn. "I'm way too busy to tour, and so is Dean," Mosshart says. "LJ, he's been freelance-bassing all over the place," including for Canadian act City and Colour. White is in the middle of a self-imposed touring hiatus.

In place of a tour, the group has been posting a series of in-studio performance clips and instructional videos that are both insightful and oddly humorous.

"Instead of actually physically showing up places," Mosshart says, "we're trying to find creative ways to let people know this record is out.