Killers guitarist Dave Keuning says the group has “been jamming here and there in sound check,” working up ideas for what will eventually become the Las Vegas group’s third album. But he adds that he doesn’t expect that to appear any time soon.
“The (recording), it’s at least a year off, so it’s hard to say what will be kept,” Keuning tells Billboard.com. “A lot of people are dying to know what the third album’s going to sound like, and I can’t answer that. There’s a few gems left over from the last album (2004’s ‘Hot Fuss’) that did make this album (‘Sam’s Town’), like ‘Bones,’ ‘Reasons Unknown’ and ‘Uncle Johnny.’ But we usually focus more on what we create closer to recording the album.”
And “Sam’s Town,” which debuted at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 in October and has sold 1.1 million copies in the United States so far, is hardly over. A third single, “Read My Mind,” is currently out, while the quartet recently shot a video for a fourth, “Reasons Unknown,” that includes horseback riding and, according to Keuning, frontman Brandon Flowers’ head roasted “on a chicken above some fire. It’s kind of weird.”
The horses were scarier, however. “I’d never ridden a horse in my life,” the guitarist says. “It was difficult at first, and then we got used to it. I was afraid of getting bucked off, but I kinda got the hang of it and kind of liked it by the end of the shoot. It was more fun than I thought it would be.”
The Killers are in the midst of a North American tour that wraps up June 1 in Las Vegas. The band will play European festivals during the summer, then return for another North American swing in September, following by their first trip to South America. Keuning expects the group to wind up its touring by the end of the year and take a few months off before hitting the studio again.
In the midst of all this, Flowers and his wife, Tana, are expecting their first child in July. “I’ve offered him a little advice, and that is, he won’t know what hit him,” says Keuning, who has a one-year-old son. “It does change you a lot, and they’re really exhausting at first. But they’re very lovable, too.”
