Today's Pick

The Killers have unveiled a glitzy music video for their surging "Just Another Girl," a new tune included on their first greatest hits compilation and career-spanning best-of "Direct Hits." The Glee star Dianna Agron steals the mic from The Killers' lead singer Brandon Flowers in the new video as the 27-year-old actress impersonates frontman by styling his rockstar ensembles from the band's past music videos. The whole thing has this "Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love video meets a Killers-themed episode of Glee" vibe.
The song, a strummy midtempo jam, is a collaboration between Stuart Price, who had previously worked with the band on their third studio album "Day & Age," and frontman Brandon Flowers. It seems to find room for every era of the band's career: The strummy dustbowl Springsteen influence, the blaring neon synths, the glammy strut. There's also something that I can only describe as a robotic slide-guitar sound in there. The Killers' Las Vegas-inspired aesthetic is forever.
The Killers' drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr recently called putting out a 'best of' a "douchie move," and admitted that the band weren't pleased with the decision to release a greatest hits album at this point of their career, but their contract agreement with their record label forced them to do so: "I don't feel like everybody put their prints on it. We're all playing on it, but we had to do things in stages. I cut those drums in Cincinnati then Stuart processed them. It's not what would happen normally."
The Warren Fu-directed music video finds Glee alum portraying Flowers, complete with the singer's stylish signature suit jacket, which includes feathers for shoulder pads, donning rock 'n' roll duds that echo his onstage guises over the years and "All These Things That I've Done" era mustache as the band's history is retraced through the lens of their past music videos. "All of my friends say I should move on/ All of my friends say she's just another girl," goes the song's chorus. Flowers does show up near the end of the clip, but only to applaud Agron's job well done.

The Killers offer a brief, but beautiful modern-day Cindrella story in their starry video for the gleaming new single "Shot At The Night" as the first single off of American rock band's upcoming 10th anniversary first greatest hits compilation, "Direct Hits," due out November 11. As the cautionary adage goes, what happens in Vegas stays in The Killers' new video and Sin City is their home base after all, and what better way to continue immortalizing their city than with lots of shots of the Strip, an unlikely dalliance between two attractive actors, and a maze of reflective glass surfaces.
Produced by the French electronic musician Anthony Gonzalez of M83, this glitzy synth opera "Shot At The Night," is a soaring synth-pop song and one of two new tracks that feature on their best-of collection "Direct Hits." The other fresh cut, "Just Another Girl," was produced by longtime collaborator Stuart Price. The album also include singles from the band's four studio albums to date Regarding the album's release, vocalist Brandon Flowers noted, "This record feels like a great way to clean everything up and move onto the next thing."
A neon-lit love story comes to life and Las Vegas romance blooms in the Roboshobo-directed clip, which begins with scenes of daily drudgery as a hotel maid (played by Bella Heathcote, Dark Shadows) makes beds and vacuums casino carpets inside the palace-like Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, mindlessly going through the motions of what appears to be a daily routine. She goes home alone where she rests before returning to work the following day, and nearly hits a cute pedestrian (Max Minghella, Ides of March) with her car at a crosswalk while daydreaming.
She goes about her housekeeping duties, when fate once again brings them together and Minghella and his friends convince the dutiful Heathcote to blow off work for a night on the town. Interspersed are reflected profile shots of Flowers singing the dreamy song from a high rise hotel, the two enjoy Vegas, riding a motorcycle down the Strip, watching a poker game, holding hands and kissing against the wall of a building, and just like any Las Vegas love story. The video ends after the enamored couple watches others get married at a typical Vegas wedding chapel. It's well after midnight, and he kisses her tenderly as the sun rises before she rushes back to work.

The Killers' tour may be temporarily sidelined by Brandon Flowers' laryngitis, but they're certainly not suffering from a lack of exposure. The Las Vegas rock band follow their animated love story of "Miss Atomic Bomb" with the slightly creepier fare of "Here With Me," appears on The Killers' latest fourth studio album, "Battle Born." The American rock band clearly are trying to flush their video vaults before the new year, as they have spoiled us with their third music video release in two weeks.
Flowers penned this windswept cinematic ballad with the lead singer of Scottish band Travis, Fran Healy. The Killers frontman also penned three Battle Born tracks with producer Daniel Lanois, marking the first instances of someone other than a member of the group receiving a writing credit on a Killers studio album. "Here With Me" encapsulates the '80s tinged stadium rock vibe that permeates through "Battle Born," as the third single. A huge power ballad, made to be played live, "Here With Me" is one of album's anthems.
The video was filmed in Blackpool on a break in The Killers' recent U.K. arena tour, and re-teams legendary director Tim Burton and starring actress Winona Ryder, the pair, who worked together on the iconic film "Edward Scissorhands," for a tale of love, obsession and, naturally, insanity. Fans of old school Burton, who've grown tired of his more Disney flair, will no doubt revel over the throwback trademarks of wax mannequins and startling dark deco themes. Catch the clip and don’t let this chummy holiday season stop you from getting spooked. That clearly hasn't thwarted this director.
Inspired by the 1935 film, "Mad Love," this eerie clip features all of the expected dark, artistic Burton twists and sees director at his creepiest, most Gothic best, with a cruel twist in the last minute that elevates things to a whole new level of creepiness. While the rock band performing in an entirely empty, ostentatiously grand performance hall, and pale guy with bug eyes caught in a Mannequin-like romance. That is, he's in love with a wax Winona Ryder, which occasionally comes to life to love him back. As we learn in the end, mannequins are great to love because they can be your date at dinner and also your candle. Every story has a moral. Watch.

Four years after the last album "Day & Age" saw them dip their toe into dancier waters, The Killers make their grand return with a artistic video for the Killersiest comeback single, "Runaways," the lead single from the Las Vegas rock band's upcoming fourth studio album, "Battle Born," which is their first in four years and due to be released on September 18.
Influenced by the best material from Bruce Springsteen, "Runaways," is an 80s-rock fever dream that's crazily big, even by their grandiose standards: a Vesuvian gusher of Springsteen mythos, Toto-Journey power hooks and lead singer Brandon Flowers' unmistakable commitment to unmistakable commitment." When you put a thunderbolt in your new album logo, we expect a first single as mighty as the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. In the Killers' new song, the band comes pretty close, and reminds us how much we've missed them.
"Runaways" starts off gently with some bare-bones piano chords, an acoustic guitar and not a whole lot else, but it gains momentum faster than you can remember the lyrics to "Mr. Brightside." Flowers is an excellent voice in telling the story of a teenage love that led to a shotgun wedding and is threatening to fall apart years later. Four minutes later, you've got a galloping desert rocker good enough to roll with the best of the Vegas quartet's catalog. "Runaways" continues the Killers' fascination, and had that very powerful ability to open the record.
Dark and dreamy, the Warren Fu-directed video is a combo of the abstract and performance video which mostly shows Flowers and his bandmates hit the desert and perform in a pitch black room on top of red futuristic platforms. As Flowers said, the clip "definitely conjures up some spirits," that leave vapor trails of fist-pumping, tear-streaming rock sonically akin to Asia's "Heat of the Moment." The band opts for brilliant pops of color with a lot of black background as Flowers recounts his seemingly doomed romance. It also looks like the performance screen for "Rock Band," without the actual game. Everybody looks good, refreshed.