We propose a new scheme to guide and cool three-level alkali-metal atoms in a blue-detuned interference field composed of two counter-propagating doughnut hollow beams, and analyze the intensity distribution of the interference field of the two hollow beams and its intensity gradient one. Our study shows that the high intensity gradient of the interference field is desirable to realize intensity-gradient cooling for the guided atoms, and the minimum optical potential at the nodes of the interference field is high enough to guide almost all atoms released from a standard magneto-optical trap. We also perform Monte-Carlo simulations for dynamic process of the intensity-gradient cooling, and show that an (87)Rb atomic sample with a temperature of 120 muK can be directly cooled to a final equilibrium temperature of 4.71 muK in our guiding scheme.