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Brandon Flowers has spent over two decades as the vocal powerhouse behind The Killers, a band built on synths, eyeliner and Vegas neon. His new solo record throws most of that out the window to be honest. “THRASHER”, out August 21, 2026 on Island Records, is his first solo album in eleven years, and by his own description it’s a country western record through and through.
The Basics
Ten tracks. Recorded last July at Nashville’s Historic RCA Studio A, the same room where Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton once cut records. Produced by Shawn Everett and Jonathan Rado, the same pair who shaped the last two Killers albums, Imploding the Mirage and Pressure Machine. Flowers called the sessions one of the highlights of his career, crediting Rado and Everett with pulling together a room full of seasoned Nashville players.
Those players matter here. David Rawlings, long known for his work alongside Gillian Welch, contributes guitar. Bruce Bouton brings pedal steel. And on harmonica, the record features Charlie McCoy, now in his eighties, who played on every one of Bob Dylan’s Nashville sessions including the 1966 smash “Blonde on Blonde“.
The tracklist runs: “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind”, “One of Us”, “Tiger’s Blood”, “Plans”, “Paradise”, “Miss America”, “Angel”, “The Red Ground”, “In a Heartbeat”, and “An American Dream”.
What It Sounds Like
Anyone expecting Mr Brightside energy should reset those expectations early. Flowers has described the album as split between two moods, one romantic and one narrative, with the narrative half picking up roughly where “Pressure Machine” left off. That 2021 Killers record was already a departure, trading arena scale for small town storytelling set in rural Utah. “THRASHER” pushes further in that direction, built around acoustic guitar, pedal steel, strings and warm backing vocals rather than synthesizers.
The label has described a mix that stretches from honky tonk numbers to slower ballads, with mariachi horns showing up on “The Red Ground” and a bigger, more expansive feel returning on “Tiger’s Blood”. The closing track, “An American Dream”, is pitched as something closer to a fever dream than a straight ballad, built around Flowers picturing his mother while sitting with his aging father.
Where It Comes From
This isn’t a costume Flowers is trying on. He grew up in the small town of Nephi, Utah, and has talked about long drives with his father, Terry, who filled the car with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. That’s the well this album draws from.
Several songs are written from other people’s perspectives, though the details are close to home. “One of Us” is a tribute to a brother in law who died suddenly a few years back. “Miss America” moves from bright, nostalgic images of eighties shopping mall pageants into darker early memories. “Paradise” pulls from Flowers’ extended family and their years working in Las Vegas casinos, watching that world wear people down over time.
Brandon Flowers put it simply in the album trailer, quoting Walt Whitman’s line about containing multitudes, and saying he’s grown large enough as a person to hold onto rock and roll while also making room for his father’s music. He was careful to add that this isn’t him walking away from his old catalogue. He just found space for something else alongside it.
Talking to NME the day after Bruce Springsteen presented him with a Special International Award at the Ivor Novello Awards in London, Flowers named Springsteen as a direct influence on this project, describing “THRASHER” as two records folded into one, a romantic side and a narrative side that continues the story he started on “Pressure Machine”.
The First Taste
The lead single, “Plans”, arrived on June 26, 2026, and it’s the clearest signal yet of where this record sits. Acoustic guitar, pedal steel, harmonica and strings carry the track, with female backing vocals filling out the sound. It was described as twangy and wistful, and noted that early listeners were already drawing comparisons to “Pressure Machine”.
A live performance video of the song was filmed inside RCA Studio A, giving fans a first look at the room and some of the musicians behind the record before the full album drops.
On the Road
Flowers is backing the album with a full tour. The North American leg kicks off September 1 in Phoenix and wraps October 6 with a hometown show in Las Vegas at the Encore Theater at Wynn, with stops along the way in Los Angeles, Chicago, Brooklyn and Toronto. From there the tour crosses to the UK and Ireland, opening in Bournemouth on October 14, followed by a night at London’s Royal Albert Hall, then Bristol, Nottingham, Manchester, York, Glasgow, Birmingham and Dublin’s Olympia to close things out on October 27.
Before any of that, he’s booked for Newport Folk Festival in late July and Austin City Limits in October, both fitting settings for where this album lives musically.
What the Title Means
Flowers hasn’t explained the title publicly, and it doesn’t correspond to any track on the album. Longtime Neil Young fans will probably notice the overlap with his 1979 song of the same name, which shares themes of open roads, aging and leaving things behind. Worth noting that’s a guess on the listener’s part, not something Brandon Flowers has confirmed, so treat any tidy explanation you read elsewhere with some caution until he says otherwise.
What to Expect
Based on everything, “THRASHER” looks like Flowers’ most personal record since “Pressure Machine”, just filtered through pedal steel instead of synthesizers. It’s less a reinvention than an extension, the same storyteller who’s spent years writing about small towns and complicated families, now backed by musicians who’ve spent their careers in that exact tradition. Whether longtime Killers fans follow him there is the real question the album will answer.
Listen To “THRASHER” by Brandon Flowers
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