Like any good story, it begins innocently enough. A crisp London evening, a casual dinner and a catch-up between friends. Then someone, the baby-faced lead singer, asks a simple question: what are you doing after dinner? As fortune would have it, one of the diners, a 29 year-old production whiz kid who had just proven himself by making Madonna relevant again, has a home studio a few blocks away.

Two frenzied and intensely creative hours later, one of The Killers’ best tracks, Human was born late in the night. It’s the perfect love child of producer Stuart Price, a dash of Roxy Music and a glimmer of Bowie. As the lead single for their latest album Day & Age, it signals a return to form for singer Brandon Flowers, guitarists Dave Keuning and Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr.

There, in a cramped London flat, the seeds were sown for the third studio album from the best thing to come out Vegas since, well, strippers and gambling. Over the next eighteen months, as the band toured from South Africa to South Melbourne, they sent freshly shucked songs back to the same studio they retreated to that night. Price would critique, re-write and forward back his thoughts. As Brandon told Rolling Stone: “We’d do the meat and potatoes, and he adds the galaxy.”

The band were drawn to Price – who most famously co-wrote and produced Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor and remixed Killers’ tracks under the Thin White Duke moniker – because he didn’t view pop as a dirty word. “Here was somebody out there with the same kind of musical sensitivities and taste,” Ronnie tells FL down the phone. “It was quite refreshing and really, really fast. It felt like he really got us.” The ten-song record is as close to their Vegas beginnings as anything they have done before. The facial hair has been trimmed, the formal-wear unbuttoned and the boys are reveling in the freedom of taking themselves not-so-seriously again.

If there were ever a band that changed their style (new album, new haircut) with each release, it would be the Killers. Ronnie insists it’s not intentional, just a casualty of making music. “I’m really quite surprised about how things look album wise. First comes the music, then we start choosing art. One thing follows the next, it’s never any type of round table discussion or contrived idea, it feels very organic,” he says. “Looking back at the past couple of albums, wow, I can see what people are talking about. What most people see are magazine pictures and articles and they don’t see the transformation behind the scenes; it feels very real.”

Listing Aerosmith and U2 as his musical heroes, it was their recent tour with the latter that changed the way Ronnie realised how to entertain the masses. “Touring with U2, I would just go to front of house and watch the whole show and feel like I was at a concert. I still get starry-eyed when I see shows like that.” Cast aside images of coffee tables laden with white powder: it was strictly tea and children backstage for Bono and company. What did the Killers learnt from U2? “How to be nice to people,” says Ronnie sincerely. “Those guys and their crew must have had good parents or something.”

On their way to Australia to play at the V Festival all around the country this month, Ronnie is fond of his fellow headliners. “Elbow and Snow Patrol both [have] great records. Those are the bands I love to listen to on flights. I think you need to listen to the whole album in order to really appreciate it.” And, from intimate sideshows to stadium scorchers, The Killers’ ascension into the halls of big time bands has been swift. But it hasn’t always been easy. “There’s a difference between playing to people where you can still see the whites in their eyes and playing to a whole sea of people,” says Ronnie.

“Bigger crowd means bigger expression, you know what I mean? I don’t know if we’re masters at that yet. We just do what we do and hope that it works out. We do what feels natural…When you think about where we are right now, you think if you’ve come this far you’re in it for the rest of your life.”

With tea and children high on their agenda, we can only hope.

The Killers headline the V Festival around the country:

Sat Mar 28 – Sydney
Sun Mar 29 – Gold Coast
Sat Apr 4 – Melbourne
Sun Apr 5 – Perth