“There’s quite a bit of difference in age between me and my siblings - I’m the youngest - so I was always around adults,” he shares. Back then, though, The Man says he was a little different. We might know Brandon now as a stadium, or festival-headlining conductor, lifting our moods with every punch of the air behind his glittery K-adorned synths: a man prone to dazzling outfits, from Dior feather jackets to his more recent head-to-toe gold look.

That localness and that tradition, I think, is beautiful.”

“The people hold to their traditions and their values and their way of life, and they stick to it. “There’s something beautiful about it,” he says fondly. While some might view that as a negative, the musician saw another side. He describes Nephi at that time as “ the ‘50s - had it not been for advancements in the automotive industry”: a place that had stagnated and where “you wouldn’t be surprised if the TVs were black and white”. The stories are sewn together by soundbites from current Nephi locals, while Flowers’ words all have at least a grain of truth to them (though some of their endings are more fictionalised), representing the people he grew up with and around. The record crafts an in-depth look at life in the town, from its tragedies (a young couple who got hit by a train and killed the opioid epidemic’s grip on locals) to tales of young love (the sad acoustic swoon of ‘Runaway Horses’) and chasing the American Dream (‘The Getting By’’s chiming slow-build). I just decided to go with it, and so we really went all the way.” “It was almost unavoidable - whenever I went to write, I was. “I was immersed in the seasons again, and in the geography and the mountains and the accent,” he explains over the phone, the day before ‘Pressure Machine’’s release. Although he didn’t move back to Nephi itself when he and his family left Vegas - they now live 80 minutes up the road - being in a similar environment was enough to get the frontman travelling mentally back in time. It documents Nephi, the 5,300-person Utah town he lived in between the ages of 10 and 16, and the people and stories that make up some of its layered history. Their eighth album ‘Pressure Machine’ delves even further into that new territory, marrying Brandon’s recent introspection with his knack for building 3D characters that bring their songs vividly to life. Over the course of 2017’s ‘Wonderful Wonderful’ and last year’s ‘Imploding The Mirage’, their leader began to expand his storytelling into something much more personal. He and The Killers - drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr, bassist Mark Stoermer and guitarist Dave Keuning - had always been associated with the seedy glitz of Sin City, but leaving it in the desert dust opened up a new chapter for the band. Four years ago, Brandon Flowers left the neon lights of Las Vegas behind and moved some 400 miles northwest to Utah.

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