Las Vegas band the Killers, from left: Mark Stoermer, David Keuning, Brandon Flowers and Ronnie Vannucci. The band just released their third studio album, Day & Age. (Universal Music Group)

Las Vegas is a study in surreal extremes and contrasts. Here, you might see a massive model of the Eiffel Tower, rendered to scale in neon; there, cocktail wieners sweating under the lights in an All U Can Eat buffet. Here, a girlie show where a stripper writhes around a pole; there, a chapel where a preacher dressed as Elvis helps a clean-cut couple sanctify their love.

The Killers credit a shared love of ’90s alternative rock for bringing them together, but to appreciate their over-the-top alt-pop, you need to understand their hometown, Las Vegas.

Long before they were jet-setting superstars, Las Vegas quartet the Killers were immersed in this world of weird and weirder. While the band’s members credit a shared love of ’90s alternative rock for bringing them together, the way to appreciate their over-the-top alt-pop is to understand the city’s culture of over-stimulation.

It explains the logic behind combining South African-styled tribal chants and synthesized harpsichord, as the Killers do on This Is Your Life, a track off their new album, Day & Age. It also helps explain the hubris that compelled lead singer Brandon Flowers to try to out-Ziggy Stardust David Bowie. Flowers’s Ziggyisms extend beyond the songs on Day & Age. A week before the album’s release, he showed up at the CBC broadcasting centre in Toronto sporting a military-inspired bolero jacket with feathered epaulettes.

“Instead of rejecting the glitzy side of Vegas, the way a lot of other bands who were around when we started up did, we embraced it,” says bassist Mark Stoermer. Unlike his flamboyant bandmate, Stoermer’s outfit is more suited to a stern (if foppish) pastor than an escapee from a Siegfried and Roy show. “But by no means do we want to be a lounge band. We’re not inspired by Wayne Newton. Maybe we incorporate a little bit [of kitsch], but it’s not contrived.”

The Killers’ willingness to give the glitzier extremes of pop a bear hug has served them well. Their breakout album, 2004’s Hot Fuss, earned them five Grammy nominations and global fame. The songs on that CD helped kick off the new wave revival that has dominated mainstream pop over the past few years.

(Universal Music Group)

None of the other neo-new wave acts have achieved the Killers’ balance of fizzy excess and jittery anxiety, which they created with gleaming synths and guitars and Flowers’s glam posturing. “Never thought I’d let a rumour ruin my moonlight,” he sings in the hit Somebody Told Me, before shrugging, “Well somebody told me / That you had a boyfriend / Who looked like a girlfriend / That I had in February of last year.”

In what may have been a conscious effort to avoid becoming the Duran Duran of the oughts, the Killers took a different tack for their followup, Sam’s Town (2006). In interviews, Flowers implied that the band was attempting to celebrate grassroots American history, modelling themselves on Bruce Springsteen as much as U2. Though the album had some solid singles (particularly the anthemic Read My Mind), Sam’s Town was met with a lukewarm reception from critics.

Day & Age seems like a calculated attempt to reconnect with their original fans. The new album’s retro-futuristic styling — from Cars-esque keyboards to post-punk bass lines — sounds like a band breathing a collective sigh of relief. (Lest you think Flowers has abandoned his Springsteen homage altogether, a few appropriately cheesy sax solos evoke a goofier Clarence Clemons.)

The more interesting textures on Day & Age — those tinny harpsichord synths, for example — betray the influence of producer Stuart Price. Price established his reputation as a studio engineer through his work with acts like No Doubt and his own Les Rythmes Digitales, though he’s probably best known as the fellow who helped punch up Madonna’s 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor.

“Stuart had done a couple remixes for us that were very impressive,” says guitarist Dave Keuning. “His Mr. Brightside one was almost a different song — it’s my favourite of all our remixes. But I think I was even more impressed by his own stuff. He’s capable of playing pretty much all the instruments, so that helps him relate to whoever he’s dealing with.”

Thematically, Flowers is still yearning for simpler times, whether he’s reflecting on his parents’ enduring romance (which inspired the track A Dustland Fairytale) or wrestling with how to hold fast to his scruples in spite of his meteoric rise to stardom. The lead single, Human, is a bubbly, slightly overwrought disco trifle that tackles hedonism and disposable culture. Spaceman, which would fit comfortably on an Erasure compilation, takes a more metaphorical approach than is customary for Flowers — he ruminates about fame through the lens of, er, alien abduction.

The Killers during a live performance at MuchMusic in Toronto in 2006. (Mike Cassese/Reuters)

The other Killers appear to have an even more fraught relationship with stardom. All paint themselves as dedicated spouses; most of them are dads. In conversation, both Stoermer and Keuning are laconic to a fault, but if you read between the lines, family obligations strain their ability to enjoy life on the road. The Killers count many lifelong rockers among their loyal fans, and you have to wonder whether dudes like, say, Paul McCartney — with whom they recently performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall — have offered advice on how to balance family with a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.

“Bono is a good guy to talk to about stuff like that,” Keuning reluctantly allows. “But U2 is in a … different position, where they have private jets and they all take their entire families with them to every show.”

Keuning and Stoermer’s commitment to the Killers seems to be less about artistic passion than a desire to provide for their families in the long term. Keuning says that playing alongside McCartney, U2, Elton John and a reunited Pink Floyd at Live 8 was one of his proudest experiences as a Killer, but claims, “There aren’t that many moments in particular that stick out.

“It’s all been this slow thing where we just keep selling records. I’m just happy I don’t have to go back to work at my old job at Banana Republic. Not that it’s horrible there or anything, but you know, I don’t wanna get up at 5 a.m. to sensor-tag clothes ever again.”

Day & Age is in stores now.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.