Brandon Flowers first teased the rocking tune back in August.
The Killers have returned for their annual Christmas Day single release, this time sharing a song that might hint at the direction they’re heading in for their eighth album.
The track appeared on the band’s official social media channels – at the time of writing, it’s not available on any streaming service or DSP – with a simple caption that reads, “Santa’s got a brand new song in his bag. Merry Christmas!”
It was shared without a proper title, but as fans have pointed out, the lyrics align with a track that frontman Brandon Flowers teased in an August interview with The Current, which he said was called We Did It In The Name Of Love. In the chorus, Flowers sings: “You wanted me to play in the name of love / But the words I spoke fell into silence / And maybe when you play in the game of love / There’s a blind eye turning past the viol?nce / We did it in the name of love.”
In that same interview, Flowers mentioned the song was minted at a home studio in California – using analogue equipment, to boot – and has “a little bit of a spirit of Sisters Of Mercy”. Have a listen to the song below.
We Did It In The Name Of Love follows the release of The Killers’ second “greatest hits” album, Rebel Diamonds, which arrived on December 8 and featured the exclusive single Spirit. That song was ostensibly pulled from the band’s recently scrapped eighth album – as were earlier singles Boy and Your Side Of Town – which Flowers confirmed was dead-in-the-water right after Rebel Diamonds came out.
“It just didn’t feel authentic,” Flowers said in an interview with The Sun. “It felt like we were forcing something.” The singer went on to hint that The Killers’ eighth album would build on the rock-leaning feel of their seventh – 2021’s Pressure Machine – rather than the synth-driven flair of the prior year’s Imploding The Mirage album. Until that point, Pressure Machine was said to be a one-off stylistic detour for the band.
Supporting both their last two albums, The Killers toured Australia throughout the later chunk of 2022. In a glowing review for The Music, Roshan Clerke described Flowers as “a Sisyphean figure ever trying to reach the top of that hill, to communicate something true, to implode the mirage”.
Meanwhile, Kylie Minogue recently revealed that she’d love to collaborate with The Killers, expressing a want to eschew her bubblegum pop roots and explore an sound more heavily inspired by indie-rock.