WHITE HOT STRIPES

Jack White won't hit the stage for another six hours, but he's already worked himself into a sweat just talking about his music. It doesn't help that it's a humid 85 degrees outside the Sports Palace concert hall in Mexico City and the singer-guitarist is dressed in his Detroit duds--long-sleeved black shirt, three-piece black pinstripe suit and black felt bowler. The soggy heat wilts his jacket and causes his hat to slide slowly down his forehead, but he seems not to notice as he goes on about the things he knows and loves: Detroit blues, touring in a seatless van, making dense, minimalist music. Drummer Meg White, his bandmate and--well, more about their relationship later--hardly gets a word in. But that's cool. The pale, demure brunette simply lights another cigarette and waits until Jack runs out of air, then interjects a sentence or two before he starts up again. Jack is not rude. Meg knows this. He's just a fritzing live wire in an era of plastic-insulated cords.

The White Stripes don't follow many rules of rock, but they do stick to their own ideals, like defiant regionalists who refuse to shop at Wal-Mart. Take tonight's show in Mexico City. The duo felt so stifled by all the media attention they received for their last album--it went platinum and earned them two Grammys--that they're barely promoting their new one, "Get Behind Me Satan," in the United States. They did only a handful of interviews before taking off on a tour through Latin America, Eastern Europe and Turkey. As for the album: it was made on analog equipment (stuff even older than the eight-track), Jack and Meg played all the instruments themselves--from marimba to mandolin--and the CD was recorded in just three weeks. They've applied the same methodology to their last four albums, and as contrarian or pretentious as it sounds, it's working. "Most musicians, even the fake plastic ones, would tell you that they liked their record better when it was a demo," says Jack, as he plays with the Saint Christopher medallion that hangs on a crude string around his neck. "That's because when they made the final album, nobody in the room knew when to stop. If you're painting and don't know when to lay the brush down, you're going over what you've done until the paint is this thick. That's the most important part of art--knowing when to stop."

The White Stripes formed in 1997 on the premise that they would always work within certain minimalist constrictions--for instance, that they'd wear only black, red or white. (They're inspired as much by the minimalist Dutch art movement known as de Stijl as they are by Blind Willie McTell.) "I've had an obsession with music since I was the littlest kid," says Jack. "I can't imagine when I didn't love it. I just kept digging deeper and deeper into old rock, blues, whatever. I heard things I'd never heard before, and it changed me." The band picked up a local following in Detroit and went on to make three critically acclaimed albums. They were so postmodern cool, they seemed guaranteed to dazzle the arty crowd--and to work day jobs for the rest of their lives. But in 2002 they signed with the major label V2, and soon they were being heralded as part of a garage-band revival that included the Strokes and the Hives. "All a sudden people were looking to us to teach kids about rock and roll," says Jack. "It's like I had this second job when I got out onstage. 'OK, we must do this blues cover so this generation can relate to the roots of rock.' But I'm tired of this rock-school thing."

The Stripes' last record, "Elephant," broke on the strength of its single "Seven Nation Army," which later beat out Radiohead for the best-alternative-music Grammy. So "Get Behind Me Satan" comes with high expectations--namely, that the White Stripes will continue to push the limits of rock as no other band does. The pressure is immense for a duo that still seems obscure at its heart. "All the records in my collection probably sold less than 100,000 copies, and it didn't stop me from listening," says White, now adjusting his tightly buttoned vest that looks a size too small. "Our total intention from the beginning was that no one would care. We didn't tour around in a van with no heat, thinking everybody is gonna love this two-piece, brother-sister blues band."

Or some kind of blues band. The Detroit Free Press unearthed a marriage certificate purported to be for the two of them; their publicist says the couple has "never claimed anything other than siblings." So they're an odd pair: he is outgoing, friendly, even hammy. She is happy to go unnoticed. After they became famous, Jack, 29, wound up in the tabloids for his relationship with Renee Zellweger. Meg, 30, wound up in Detroit working on her house. When Jack is asked about Zellweger's sudden wedding to singer Kenny Chesney, he smiles and simply says, "I've heard nothing, nothing at all about that." It turns out he had other things on his mind: it's been reported that Jack wed model Karen Elson last week on his tour through the Amazon and Meg served as the maid of honor.

Fame has presented other opportunities than spreads in Us Weekly. The Stripes' iconoclastic style has made Jack the man to call for hard-to-cast, traditionalist projects. He wrote five songs on the bluegrass soundtrack for "Cold Mountain"--and even played a small role in the film as a traveling musician--and produced Loretta Lynn's comeback CD, "Van Lear Rose," which won a Grammy this year for best country album. "It's good that Jack goes out and does all these other things," says Meg, taking a drag off her umpteenth cigarette. "It keeps him excited about what he's doing, and he brings that back to whatever we work on." "Thanks, Meg," says Jack. "You're welcome, Jack," says Meg.

Jack's excitement, to borrow Meg's phrase, has pushed the Stripes to the edge of an already experimental sound. "Get Behind Me Satan" is an explosive hybrid of under-the-radar Americana, scraggly hip-hugger rock and 21st-century innovation. The duo generates amazing amounts of noisy energy though they use only electric guitar on three tracks. Jack's high-pitched, quavering vocals are sometimes sarcastic and playful, sometimes furious and searing. Like his blues mentors, he uses double-entendres when describing his desperation, loneliness and those mean, mean women who just won't let him be. The songs jump from the monster metal rhythms of the single "Blue Orchid" into the mountain hoedown "Little Ghost"; the tracks are peppered with bicycle bells, maracas and megadistortion. The combination of these disparate sounds and styles could be as nauseating as mojitos mixed with moonshine. But the simple song structures hold it all together--and Jack's passion pushes it from innovative to brilliant.

When the White Stripes finally hit the stage in Mexico City, they bring a charisma and a raw power rare even in five-piece bands. Dressed in black mariachi pants and a red T shirt, Jack screams, trembles and drops to his knees as though he's been struck by lightning. Girls in the audience hold up signs that read MARRY ME, and boys swing red and white bootleg concert shirts over their heads. After the show, a 27-year-old fan named Axl Garcia cracks a smile so wide that his braces sparkle under the floodlights. "I think Jack is a mix of Jimi Hendrix, Slash and Santana. He destroys!" Whether or not Jack, who's so knowledgeable about the rock-school thing, would be happy about this particular comparison is irrelevant. The Stripes have floored another audience. On to the next, and no seatless van this time.