A wealth of material that stateside fans most likely haven’t heard will comprise the Killers’ next release before the end of the year, according to frontman Brandon Flowers.
“In England we have a lot of B-sides that people in America would never know about because we don’t have singles here,” Flowers tells Billboard.com. “So we have about 15 of these songs that people have never heard, and we wanted to stick them on something for people to get to have them all together.”
The tentative song list includes “All the Pretty Faces” (“When You Were Young” B-side), movie soundtrack tunes “Shadowplay” (a Joy Division cover from Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic “Control”) and “Move Away” (“Spider-man 3”), as well as a cover of Mel Tillis’ “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” Flowers also hasn’t ruled out putting a new track or two on the album, which he hopes to have out by the holiday season.
“We’re also going to do another Christmas single for the Red Campaign as well,” Flowers says. “That’s exiting. We’ve written ‘Don’t Shoot Me Santa,’ which will hopefully be available on Dec. 1. Last year we were able to raise over $100,000 from the one song (‘A Great Big Sled’), and hopefully we’ll be able to do it again.”
Still on the road supporting its sophomore effort “Sam’s Town,” the Killers are touring the states again because “We feel like we didn’t do enough touring in America on this album,” Flowers says. The outfit, which begins its next leg Sept. 4 at Red Rocks outside Denver, plans on hitting Australia and South America before it ends its touring cycle in November.
But Already there are new ideas floating around at soundchecks and in computers for the group’s next studio effort, which is tentatively scheduled for a fall 2008 release. Upon mentioning the appeal of the ’80s dance-inspired “Jacques Lu Cont’s Thin White Duke Mix” version of “Mr. Brightside,” Flowers hinted the band could be returning to that sound. “That’s something we really love,” Flowers says, “and that possibly could be a third album idea.”