The Killers' new album Pressure Machine comes out next week (8/13 via Island), and in addition to featuring the same production team as last year's genuinely great Imploding the Mirage (The War On Drugs collaborator Shawn Everett and Foxygen's Jonathan Rado), it also features another impressive guest who is no stranger to big-name collaborations: Phoebe Bridgers. She's on the song "Runaway Horses." Brandon Flowers spoke about her contribution in a new interview with Stereogum:
She knocked us out with a couple beautiful covers, “Read My Mind” and “Human.” She’s been on my radar since I first heard “Funeral” years ago, and you just know there’s something special about her. It was nice to know that she was also a fan of ours. It just kind of came together naturally. It was fast. It was during the middle [of the pandemic], everyone was wearing masks. I don’t think we ever really saw her face. She came into the studio, she went into a darkly lit live room. She had already gotten really familiar with the song, did a couple takes, and then that was it. She disappeared into the Los Angeles night. [Laughs]
[...] We definitely needed a female voice on “Runaway Horses.” She has a history, I think, with not only that type of music but even in her lineage — her grandpa has rodeo ties. It just felt right. But you just want to have a sense of place and to play around with instrumentation. The fiddle and the harmonica and the pedal steel, it just really helped ground it.