The Killers have always been weirder than they've gotten credit for—but even by that measure, their forthcoming fifth studio album Wonderful Wonderful (out September 22) is pretty fucking weird. The first single from the Jacknife Lee-produced album, "The Man," possesses a glammy and braggadocious swagger only hinted at on the band's third album, 2008's underrated Day & Age; elsewhere, there's sports-footage samples, M83-style synth blowouts, lyrical allusions to "fake news," Toto-esque atmospherics, and a song called "Tyson Vs. Douglas." The album's closing track bears the name "Have All the Songs Been Written?", but it's clear that the Las Vegas pop-rock mainstays are far from out of ideas.

Noisey: It's been five years since your last album. What took you guys so long? Brandon Flowers: Our bass player and our guitar player—touring isn't their favorite thing. After we go on tour for a year and a half, they want to take long breaks. That's where the solo albums came in. Then, once we got back together, making a new record ended up taking us longer than anticipated. [_Laughs_]

A studio vet who's helmed records by a variety of rock luminaries from R.E.M. and U2 to Weezer and the Cars, Lee provided creative behind-the-boards insight for a band who still scoffs at the notion that they're studio nerds. "He wanted to make a rock 'n' roll record, but he also knew we had to do something different to stay relevant," Vannucci claims. "He was big on quality control. We went up to his house to sort of talk turkey with him, and he said a lot of great things that made us believe that he was of a very similar mindset. He also knew that something different had to happen—and so did we."

Adding a layer of irony to all of this newness is the second single from Wonderful Wonderful, the pedal-to-the-floor "Run for Cover." It's one of the album's more Killers-y songs, which isn't a surprise when you consider that—unlike the rest of the album, which was written and recorded over the last year and a half—it's almost a decade old. "It needed a different skin," drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Jr. tells me as he and frontman Brandon Flowers guzzle water in a conference room nestled within VICE's Brooklyn office. "Jacknife said, 'It's gotta sound almost like you're a new band—it shouldn't be overcooked, and it can't be too clean.' The other version we had was decorated the wrong way."

Were there any unique struggles you faced as a band while making this record?

Ronnie Vannucci, Jr.: Hm. [_Pauses_] Yes. [_Laughs_] There were unique struggles, for sure. It just comes down to taking care of your band, you know? Realizing that not everybody operates on the same schedule anymore? We're all older. [_Gestures towards Brandon_] He's got three kids. People develop their own orbit, priorities change.

Also, there was so much self-imposed pressure of like trying to figure out what skin these songs were going to wear. The demos were good, but we needed to figure out a way for them to sort of become themselves—and that takes a lot of flexing. Sometimes, you get lucky and a song will happen quickly, and sometimes you have to re-do a song five or six times to get it where it should be. You have to get surgical with it.

You guys worked with M83's Anthony Gonzalez previously, and I can hear a little bit of his influence on this album.

Really?

Yeah. His music embodies teenage nostalgia. What was the music of your youth?

1987 was a big year for me. It was the first time I really started digging into music. License to Ill came out in 1985, the Smiths were still a band, the Cure had just come out with Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, and my first tape was Head on the Door. I remember watching the claymation video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," and Genesis was still going on. There was a lot of great music. My dad always listened to music super loud, so we always had music on—he was always listening to Kiss.

Flowers: I got into music around 1994. I was 12 or 13, and I got a lot of my brother's music handed down to me—the Smiths, New Order, stuff that I just gravitated towards. One of the bands that had a big impact on me that we've never been able to really promote was Oingo Boingo. I loved Oingo Boingo. It was all I listened to. I was thinking about that today—how nobody associates us with them. It's always, like, U2, Psychedelic Furs, Bruce Springsteen—but Oingo Boingo had a big impact on me.

You were one of the last bands in recent memory that gained popularity through increased airplay on MTV and MTV 2. That's not really a possibility anymore.

Vannucci, Jr.: Almost everybody has a phone now, and there's some sort of music or app on their phone. I have a few of them on my phone. Satellite and terrestrial radio are still knockin' around.

Flowers: [ Sighs_] I don't know. We play our kids music, my parents played me music, y'know what i mean? That's still going to happen. You still gotta go with the flow a little bit. Of course, we romanticize going to record stores and those kind of things, and it's kinda sad that they're gone, but I think you can still be exposed to it, and if you're a good parent [_Laughs_] you can teach your kids.Some of my favorite memories in life were going to rent movies with my dad and getting a Coke. It's crazy that that's not gonna exist for me and my kids. It was fun sneakin' a peek at the room that you weren't allowed to go in—the adult section. [_Laughs_] Remember that?

Vannucci, Jr.: The saloon doors! _Ooh, what's in there?