The Killers return with synth-laced single ‘Your Side of Town’
The one-off song is the band's first new music of 2023
By Emily Zemler
The Killers have dropped a new single, ‘Your Side of Town’. The track — written by frontman Brandon Flowers and produced alongside Stuart Price and Shawn Everett — marks the rock band’s first new music since last year’s one-off release ‘Boy’.
The synth-heavy chorus opens with the lovelorn lyrics: “I’m hanging on your side of town/I notice when you’re not around/Can’t keep my cool, I’m burning inside/A broken heartbeat, barely alive.”
“Hello everyone, with much excitement we present you with ‘Your Side of Town,’” the band wrote on social media. “It’s got the ghosts of a lot of synth music that inspired us over the years. And yet somehow feels completely our own. Now it’s yours! Turn it up.”
The Killers’ most recent LP, Pressure Machine, arrived in 2021. Last August, they released “Boy,” which was written prior to the album. The song, produced by the band alongside Stuart Price and Shawn Everett, explored themes that led Flowers to want to make Pressure Machine.
The band has been on tour throughout the summer. Last week, they courted controversy during a concert at the Black Sea Arena in Batumi, Georgia when they invited a Russian fan onstage to help perform ‘For Reasons Unknown.’ Flowers, in an attempt at international diplomacy, called Russians and Georgians “brothers,” which was met with loud protests and boos from the crowd.
The Killers issued an apology later that same night, maintaining it was not their intention to offend anyone. “We have a longstanding tradition of inviting people to play drums and it seemed from the stage that the initial response from the crowd indicated that they were okay with tonight’s audience participation member,” they wrote on social media. “We did not mean to upset anyone and we apologize. We stand with you and hope to return soon.”
The band will perform as part of Reading and Leeds this weekend, and will headline Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California, which runs Sept. 29 through Oct. 1.