"It’s a strange dichotomy. It’s not any one thing at one time." Ronnie Vannucci Jr. is referring to his hometown of Las Vegas, though he could just as easily be talking about his band, the Killers. When the quartet—Brandon Flowers (vocals, keyboards), Dave Keuning (guitar, vocals), Mark Stoermer (bass, vocals) and Vannucci (drums)—released Hot Fuss in 2004, it broke open above the mainstream like a neon-powered piñata, thanks largely to the rapturous new-wavy hits "Somebody Told Me" and "Mr. Brightside." Sam’s Town followed two years later, exposing Flowers’ adoration of Bruce Springsteen. The media accused the Killers of blatant delusions of grandeur, but like Las Vegas itself, they kept flourishing in the face of naysayers. A collection of b-sides, Sawdust was the band’s first experience working with super-producer Stuart Price, who remixed a few tracks for the album. The collaboration was so successful, Price was charged with producing the Killers’ third full-length, Day & Age. Vannucci spoke about working with Price, leadoff single "Human," and why steel drums were necessary on Day & Age.

During a recent interview Brandon Flowers did with Rolling Stone, the last line is "Ronnie says if we never make another album, he’s happy. I don’t know how to take that." How should he take that?

That’s the more succinct version of what I said. If something bad were to happen and we weren’t able to make another record—of course, that’s not on anybody’s agenda, to make something bad happen. But if something were to happen and we weren’t able to make another one, I said I’d be comfortable with having this one on my epitaph. That’s exactly what I said. That’s coming from a place where, oftentimes, as soon as you make a record, you want to redeem yourself or change things or you’re not happy with it. That’s every record to a certain extent. It’s less so on this experience. I think I can speak for everybody in the band. I think we’re all really proud of it. We really got into a stride with the process of writing songs and making records, and the recording process. It’s finally getting comfortable in some ways.

"Human" feels primed for a big dance floor. Stuart Price’s influence is immediately apparent; you can almost see the light show.

The thing with "Human," I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people. There’s not another song like "Human" on the record. There’s a lot of dynamics, not so much that it loses a continuity or any type of congruent sound, but it is quite different. Every single we put out is different from each other. "Somebody Told Me" is probably the closest kin to "Human," but I mean, songs like "Bones," which is a Soft Parade meets Elvis’ ’68 Comeback Special meets Oingo Boingo… I think that’s the good thing about our band. We’re able to have a dynamic and still keep it very original to us.

Putting "Human" out as your first single says a lot about the direction you want listeners to expect you’re taking.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s misleading. Who knows? I think the bigger picture is that we should be a band that can, if we want, put out a country single or a reggae song. I think as long as there’s a good song in there, I would be comfortable releasing it.

How did working with Stuart Price go?

It was really good. Sawdust was kind of our introduction to working with him in the studio. Because it was so easy and so fast, it went really quickly and efficiently. There was nothing lost in translation. When we got ready to start writing for Day & Age back in January, we knew that Stuart was our guy, just because the planets were aligned with us. We just felt like we could talk with him and bounce ideas off him. We’d have this virtual band practice. We’d all be demoing and sending files back and forth to each other. This is really so that later on, when we got in a room, we wouldn’t have our thumbs up our asses. We’d have a go-to spot. We had a nice focus when we went in the studio in June. We knocked it out in four weeks.

Did Day & Age produce any new revelations about the Killers?

I think this time around, each one of us was less afraid to follow a song in its natural direction. That is, not pigeonholing it for our sake, but more letting the song breathe for the song’s sake. There’s a lot of bravery involved. You gotta really let loose of your personal ideas and do what’s right for the song and let it go and try not to overanalyze it. I think there was a point—again, the word "stride" comes into mind—where we’re just hitting a stride with that in mind. We’re just doing things that were not typically "us," but for the sake of where the song was going. It got to the point where, it’s not really a joke, but just kinda a funny idea of putting steel drums in a part of a song. You wouldn’t really know the Killers to incorporate steel drums, but it was what was right for the song. And we’re just kinda learning to give that up while keeping true to us.