Nice Guys Finish First

Mark my words: In the next few months, the synth-perforated gospel of the Killers will be buzzing from the lips of every hipster, radio DJ and avid watcher of The O.C in America.

But it won’t be because the Las Vegas quartet is living up to its ferocious moniker. In fact, it’s something of a misnomer. It just happens that “the Shy Guys” didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

“We get people thinking we’re arrogant because of interviews,” says 22-year-old vocalist Brandon Flowers. “It’s so hard to overcome so much just to be able to put on a good show and play your music and make it this far, and people are trying to drag us down because of things like that.

“I even understand that they want you to look good in videos and things like that,” he continues. “But it’s like, we’re even doing that, and we will get shit for not being Liam Gallagher in an interview. If you’re nice and you’re quiet, you must be some asshole for not talking. It’s ridiculous.”

Oozing shyness despite a tenacious name is just one of the striking paradoxes that characterizes the young band. For starters, despite hailing from arguably the most debauched tourist trap in the country, the natty suit jackets the group prefers are more Wall Street than they are MGM Grand.

But the band’s duds are also reminiscent of the attire worn to afternoon tea in jolly old England, the country where the band first gained a record deal (with small label Lizard King in July 2003) and mixed its Island Records debut Hot Fuss (due in June) with Smashing Pumpkins collaborator Alan Moulder. Moreover, like fellow UK-before-U.S. success story the Strokes, the Killers also gained bushels of glowing press from the hypemongers at NME, which modestly printed that it “[couldn’t] remember the last time a band arrived on these shores as perfectly formed as the Killers.”

In typically understated fashion, Flowers is convinced that an across-the-pond backlash is imminent.

“If you don’t throw a TV out of a window or do something retarded, then they’re not going to like you anymore,” he says of the British press. “They also have a backlash against Americans right now. They have this Britpack thing [a group of British bands touring together], they call it, and they’re really pushing that. And none of the bands are good. All of the bands that have been coming out that have been good American bands for the last year or whatever — they’re trying to make their own little scene out of what they’ve got, and it’s not much.”

In fact, it’s obvious that the immediate success of the Killers in England is largely because the band is heavily influenced by great and still-beloved Brit artists of the past. On Fuss, Flowers sings in a debonair voice that’s Jarvis Cocker without the political agenda, David Bowie minus the ghoulish paranoia and Simon LeBon sans whiny yelps — especially on the bass-spiked “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” and strutting “Mr. Brightside.”

“All These Things That I’ve Done” parades like New Order’s mid-’80s gems and features a gospel choir, à la Primal Scream’s landmark indie-dance mashup Screamadelica. And “Midnight Show” busts a move with whirring riffs reminiscent of the spunk-funk of Duran Duran’s Rio — though Flowers would prefer that the term “new wave” not be thrown anywhere near the Killers.

“It’s not new wave,” he says. “I don’t know what we are, but it doesn’t matter. If it’s good stuff, it’s good. I’m not going to complain about it, but we’re not new wave.”

The Killers certainly proved that at a recent sold-out Cambridge, Massachusetts, concert opening for fellow ebullient rock stars Stellastarr*. Flowers paused every so often to throw off some keyboard embellishments but more often spent his time stalking the tiny stage in a dapper black jacket. His eyes smoldered with a fierce intensity matched only by bassist Mark Stoermer’s wiry low end and guitarist David Keuning’s crisp riffs.

Flowers said little to the crowd, deferring instead to the music — including the standout “Somebody Told Me,” which features the best gender-bending chorus since Blur’s “Girls and Boys” (Somebody told me/You had a boyfriend/ Who looked like a girlfriend/That I had in February of last year).

The Cambridge audience greeted the band with enthusiasm, even if the response was tepid compared with that of one rabid Killers fan at a recent Washington, D.C., show.

“Some of the guys [in the band] had a crazy guy taking them home,” Flowers says. “That’s our most crazy story, probably. I wasn’t there. Some English guy that was at the gig offered to take a few of the guys home who stayed later, and eventually he [the English guy] stopped to go to the bathroom. He had locked the doors, and they had to unlock the doors and run away and call us to pick them up. The last thing he said to ’em was, ‘Don’t freak out.’ So they freaked out.”

With a slot at the Coachella festival and a possible stint on this summer’s Lollapalooza tour alongside Flowers’ childhood fave Morrissey, the Killers might need a fleet of lawyers handy to deal with an ever-expanding stable of obsessed fans. Yet Flowers seems wholeheartedly humble — and endearingly innocent — as he downplays the impact his band has had already.

“We’re so new right now that it’s hard,” he says. “We’re not really going to affect people or touch people until they know the record and come see us. So right now, I just hope that it’s exciting for ’em and that they can catch on to how good the pop songs are and be moved sometimes. We’re really nice and we’re good at playing our songs.” He laughs. “And that’s what’s supposed to matter.”