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BATTLE BORNBIOGRAPHYFrom out of the wreckage of the American Civil War, the great state of Nevada came into being on October 31st, 1864. Its creation immediately helped to secure the re-election of Abraham Lincoln, the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and, ultimately, the future of the union. Today, that proud but painful history is en-shrined in the two words emblazoned on the upper left-hand corner of the state flag: ‘Battle Born’.That phrase has always resonated with Brandon Flowers. It’s what The Killers named their studio in Las Vegas, and when the band reconvened last May to start work on the follow-up to 2008’s Day & Age, it be-came first a song title, then a thematic touchstone, and eventually the name of the album itself. But not all battles are blood and thunder: after a yearlong hiatus that saw three of the four Killers launch solo careers, they quickly discovered that timing and circumstance can be daunting adversaries in their own right. Safe to say, Battle Born’s title was well-earned.“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, no question,” says Brandon. “It’s the longest we’ve ever taken to make a record, and the longest I’ve ever spent on the lyrics. We thought we had enough songs, but then we real-ised that we didn’t, and so we had to pound away and grind it out until we were certain that we were ready.”That took time, and The Killers had already spent a lot of it. In February 2010, after the better part of a decade spent on the road and with the end of a mammoth 18 month world tour in sight, the band were at a crossroads. They had sold over 15 million copies of Hot Fuss, Sam’s Town and Day & Age, visited every corner of the globe, and become one of the world’s biggest rock ’n’ roll bands in the process, but they found themselves needing time to, as Brandon puts it, “put everything into perspective. Mark and Dave were pushing for it, while Ronnie and I probably would’ve gone and made another album right away if they’d wanted to. But if anybody in a band wants to take a break, then it becomes the right thing to do. And so tak-ing that time off was definitely the right move.”After Brandon, Mark and Ronnie had all dabbled successfully in solo waters, it was the band’s rapturous live return headlining last April’s inaugural Lollapalooza festival in Chile that convinced them to, in Ronnie’s words, “Get back in the fucking room together and write some songs.” After a few days, the song they all ended up coalescing around was Battle Born’s eventual lead single, Runaways.A small-town drama of epic-scale proportions, Runaways is everything you could wish for from a Killers comeback single; an unmistakably American expression of romance and optimism that heralds their return with cyclonic, Who-esque guitars and a chorus big enough to be bellowed from one end of

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