Not leaving Las Vegas

Two years ago, Brandon Flowers’ band dumped him because he refused to move to Los Angeles. Now that original group has fallen apart, while Flowers’ new band, the Killers, basks in the afterglow of its critically acclaimed debut, “Hot Fuss.”

Who said you need to live in L.A. to make it in music?

Las Vegas may be the old folks home for artists long past their prime, but it’s also given birth to one of the stickiest synth-pop acts to crop up since, well, the ‘80s -- one that’s as catchy as the Cars, morbid as the Smiths and playful as the Talking Heads, but not so married to the plugged-in artificiality of that era that it’s foregone the guitars.

“The whole mentality across the world is you live in America, you go to New York or L.A. I love Las Vegas, and I didn’t want to leave,” said Flowers, a Jekyll-and-Hyde singer / keyboardist whose understated speaking manner contradicts an electric stage persona. “With music, if you write songs, especially with the Internet and everything, you can get them out there, so I knew it was in me to write these songs and I found the right people and we all did it.”

Those right people included guitarist-Banana Republic sales clerk David Keuning, bass player-blood and body part transporter Mark Stoermer and drummer-quickie wedding photographer Ronnie Vannucci. That trio joined keyboardist-hotel bellhop Flowers in late 2002 to work out their aggressions toward their day jobs in songs that eventually landed on the group’s debut.

Two months since “Hot Fuss” hit the streets, the record’s title seems premonitory. Straight out of the gate, it racked up rave reviews in all the major music media, and the stack of press clippings continues to grow with each stop on a tour that started last September and may well continue through next year.

“We haven’t really had any major breaks,” Flowers said via phone as the band traveled from New York to Rhode Island. “We’ve had a week off here and there, but when I get home, I tend to just look at my suitcase on the floor and not even unpack it. It’s weird. It’s hard to get used to. I don’t know if I want to get used to it.”

He’d better. Of all the groups coming up in the new new-wave scene -- Interpol, the Rapture, Franz Ferdinand -- the Killers are poised to haul it out of the college radio underground and into the mainstream, first because the timing’s right and second because they have more than good looks and youth and attention in all the right places. Flowers and gang have mastered the difficult art of the perfect pop song, intersecting resonant, messed-up-relationship lyrics with hooky melodies that rattle around your brain long after the CD’s stopped spinning.

At 23, Flowers is a little young to have experienced the music of the ‘80s in real time, but that hasn’t stopped him from referencing its best elements, which he learned courtesy of a brother 12 years his senior. Thanks to him, Flowers was saved the dirty work of culling through the dreck of Haircut 100 and the Thompson Twins to get to the stuff that’s stood the test of time.

While the Killers’ songs aren’t throwbacks, per se, nearly all of them contain a reference or two to that time two decades back when big hair and black eyeliner were de rigueur, copping Robert Smith histrionics on the album opener “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine,” U2-style guitar riffs in “Somebody Told Me,” echo-y INXS vocals on “All These Things That I’ve Done” and the laissez-faire crooning of Morrissey on “Change Your Mind.”

As now-sounding as they are, the Killers’ early work came a little too soon in the ‘80s retro game for them to find an audience. As is all too common with American bands that don’t fit the reigning musical mold, the band got its first break in England. In Las Vegas, its live shows had a lukewarm reception, so the group turned to the Internet, paying a music website to post their picture, bio and a demo.

A Warner Bros. scout happened upon the site and the band, liked what he heard and invited the group to L.A. to perform in a showcase for the label, which had the option of signing them.

Warner Bros. didn’t bite, but in L.A., you never know who’s in the audience. In this case, it was a rep for the U.K. label Lizard King, who snapped them up and spat out their first single last September. “Somebody Told Me,” a fast-paced, androgynous word puzzle of a song, was an instant success, garnering them hyperbolic praise in NME, hot-off-the-presses radio airplay in England and a deal with Island Records.

Since then, the Killers have managed to penetrate the country’s fortress-like radio play lists, including L.A.’s own arbiter of alt-rock, KROQ-FM, which added the group’s first single in March, just moments after Island gave it to them.

“They played us ‘Somebody Told Me,’ we hit eject on the CD player, walked it in to Tammy and said, ‘Play this next.’ From that moment on, it never left the airways,” KROQ music director Matt Smith said. “We put ‘Mr. Brightside’ in about a month ago full time, and it has been massive. That really, I think, is what has launched this band to the next level is hearing a second song that was just as good if not better than the first. My guess is we could go four or five deep on this album.”

Says Smith: “Amongst all this kind of new pop renaissance music, the group could be our biggest one.”

Tickets for the group’s two KROQ-sponsored shows at the Troubadour this weekend offer proof. Both sold out. “They went quicker than the speed of light, once posted online,” Troubadour talent booker Greg Siegel said.

“I hope we can help put Las Vegas out there, that people realize they can do it, but I wish people listened to better music,” Flowers said. “I love old-style songwriting, whether it’s 20 years ago or 30 or 40 years. People need that. There’s nothing wrong with having a great chorus and a good verse and a bridge.

“Music got far off it, and hopefully we’re bringing some of it back.”

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The Killers

When: 8 and 11:15 p.m. Saturday

Where: Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

Price: Both shows sold out.

Info: (310) 276-6168 or www.troubadour.com

Susan Carpenter can be reached at susan.carpenter@latimes.com.