The White Stripes were an American rock duo from Detroit, Michigan formed in 1997. The group consisted of Jack White (songwriter, vocals, guitar, piano, and mandolin) and his ex-wife Meg White (drums and vocals). After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit music scene, the White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002 as part of the garage rock revival scene. Their successful and critically acclaimed albums White Blood Cells and Elephant drew attention from a large variety of media outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The single "Seven Nation Army", which used a guitar and an octave pedal to create the now iconic opening riff, became one of their most recognizable songs. The band recorded two more albums, Get Behind Me Satan in 2005 and Icky Thump in 2007, and dissolved in 2011 after a lengthy hiatus from performing and recording.

The White Stripes used a low-fidelity approach to writing and recording. Their music featured a melding of garage rock and blues influences and a raw simplicity of composition, arrangement, and performance. The duo were also noted for their fashion and design aesthetic which featured a simple color scheme of red, white, and black—which was used on every album and single cover the band released—as well as the band's fascination with the number three. The band's discography consists of six studio albums, two live albums, one extended play (EP), one concert film, one tour documentary, 26 singles, and 14 music videos. Their last three albums each won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. In 2015, Rolling Stone named them the sixth greatest duo of all time.

In high school, Jack Gillis (as he was then known) met Meg White at the Memphis Smoke—the restaurant where she worked and where he would read his poetry at open mic nights. The two became friends, and began to frequent the coffee shops, local music venues, and record stores of the area. By this time, Gillis was already playing drums with musician friends, including his upholstery apprenticeship mentor, Brian Muldoon. In 1994, he got his first professional job as the drummer for the Detroit cowpunk band Goober & the Peas.

After dating for several years, Gillis and White married on September 21, 1996. Contrary to convention, he took his wife's surname. Shortly after, Goober and the Peas broke up, but Jack continued to play in other bands, such as the garage punk band the Go (he played lead guitar on their 1999 album Whatcha Doin'), the Hentchmen, and Two-Star Tabernacle. On Bastille Day 1997, —Meg started learning to play the drums. In Jack's words, "When she started to play drums with me, just on a lark, it felt liberating and refreshing. There was something in it that opened me up." The couple then became a band and, while they considered calling themselves Bazooka and Soda Powder, they settled on the White Stripes. Jack explained the name's origin: