Marcel Winatschek

The Killers: Here With Me

There’s something about The Killers that got me through the 2000s. Hot Fuss was everywhere, the synths felt like they were reaching for something better than where I actually was, and Brandon Flowers’ voice had this ache that made sense for no particular reason. I wore out that CD. Drove around listening to it. Wanted to be somewhere else, and the songs convinced me I could get there if I just understood them well enough.

Twenty years later they’re still playing, still pretty good, and I don’t need them the way I did then. That’s fine. Sometimes a band is exactly what you need at exactly the right age, and then you grow past it or grow into other things. I still think they’re better than people give them credit for. The Killers never got cool again after those first years, which is its own kind of honesty.