Image source, Chris Phelps Image caption, Brandon Flowers is on a break from The Killers, with his first solo album in 11 years
Music correspondent Published 21 August 2026, 01:25 BST Updated 5 hours ago Brandon Flowers has a confession.
For the last 25 years, he's been the frontman of The Killers, channelling his love of stadium rock and British new wave on songs like Mr Brightside, When You Were Young and Human.
But in the back of his mind, there's always been an alternative soundtrack.
"You know, a lot of guys in my line of business develop drug addictions," he says.
It started when he was a kid in Nephi, Utah. His dad would play Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and John Conlee on the car stereo. School dances, held at the local golf club, would always feature country and western slow dances.
So when Flowers moved back home and started revisiting his childhood haunts, his passion for country was rekindled.
You can hear the results on his third solo album, Thrasher, recorded in Nashville's famed RCA Studio A - home to Dolly Parton's Jolene and I Will Always Love You - with a group of veteran musicians that included pedal steel legend Bruce Bouton, 85-year-old harmonica player Charlie McCoy, and Americana musician Margo Price.
"I sang live with them and I think they really appreciated that, because it's a very romantic way of doing it," he says.
"It's not something that people do anymore. To actually get that energy down on tape is a different thing."
It's an album he couldn't have made in his 20s.
Image source, Brandon Flowers Image caption, The singer previewed his new music at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival, with assistance from singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus
Flowers once said his "experiences weren't interesting enough" to be turned into lyrics. Now, he's excavating his diary to write about his rural upbringing and experiences of working in Las Vegas casinos.
There's also a tribute to his brother-in-law, who died suddenly several years ago and, on Miss America, a critique of the opioid crisis that hit his hometown.
"It's a sad thing, you know? It's basically doctors prescribing people heroin, and it took so many lives unnecessarily."
Prescription painkillers are chemically similar to but not the same as heroin.
He adds: "Even just in my graduating class in that little town, so many of the kids are gone. It's kind of staggering. Such a dirty business."
BBC Radio 2: Brandon Flowers picks The Tracks of My Years
The album also finds Flowers taking stock of his own life. On American Dream, he fantasises about meeting Elvis Presley (in a flying Tesla, no less) and asking him whether fame and fortune is all it's cracked up to be.
Elvis just laughs - but it's a question that's plagued Flowers for years.
"Sometimes I wonder, what am I trying to achieve, and what am I trying to prove, and who am I trying to prove it to, and what have I gotten from it?" he says.
The song came from a conversation he had with his three teenage sons, "because I worry about them comparing themselves to my success".
Flowers has always been careful to isolate his family from the effects of fame. "We don't talk about it much. There's no gold records hanging in the bathroom or anything like that." And he emphasises that success doesn't automatically bring contentment.
"My dad didn't have that, but is he less happy than me? He may even be more…