Pitchfork: The Killers Gear Up For World Tour

Of all the times I wished I wrote for Tiger Beat...Feeding off their steadily growing popularity, current alt-rock pinups the Killers are heading out on 25-date tour through Europe and Japan this week. According to the band's official website, the U.K. shows are already sold out, but hell, somebody's got to put food on the table for British ticket scalpers. The full list of dates looks like this:

02-02 Brighton, England - The Dome
02-04 Cambridge, England - Corn Exchange
02-05 Southampton, England - Guildhall
02-06 Cardiff, Wales - Cardiff University
02-07 London, England - Carling Brixton Academy
02-19 London, England - Carling Brixton Academy
02-20 Utrecht, Netherlands - Tivoli De Helling
02-21 Strasbourg, France - La Laiterie
02-22 Milan, Italy - Rolling Stone
02-24 Zurich, Switzerland - Abart
02-25 Vienna, Austria - Arena
02-26 Munich, Germany - Muffathalle
02-27 Cologne, Germany - Prime Club
03-01 Hamburg, Germany - Grunspan
03-02 Berlin, Germany - TBA
03-03 Barcelona, Spain - Apollo
03-06 Nagoya, Japan - Club Quattro
03-08 Hiroshima, Japan - Club Quattro
03-09 Osaka, Japan - Shinsaibashi Club Quattro
03-10 Tokyo, Japan - Liquid Room

The tour will continue to support the band's 2004 debut Hot Fuss, but recent shows have also seen the band slowly adding new material likely to appear on their next album. Speaking with MTV, frontman Brandon Flowers discussed the group's desire to get a fresh batch of songs out to fans. "People don't realize how excited we are to write new and good songs. It's changing a little bit. I think we're getting better. Everyone who has heard the new songs is saying [the next album is] going to be even better than the first one and that's the natural thing that should happen."

In other news, Hot Fuss (which has already gone gold in the U.S.) is getting ready to spawn a third single in the States. Reports have pegged the album's leadoff track "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" as the likely candidate. The track is also poised to appear in a proposed film project the band has in the works. As Flowers explained to MTV, "['Jenny Was a Friend of Mine'] actually goes along with a couple of our other songs. 'Midnight Show' is tied together with it and there's one more called 'Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf' that didn't make it on the album, but we're going to work on a short film, music video, if you will, that is going to have all three songs telling the story."

And finally, Hot Fuss is also up for three awards at this year's Grammy, with nominations for Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song ("Somebody Told Me"), and Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal ("Somebody Told Me"). For our more masochistic readers, the Grammys will be broadcast live on February 13, 2005 at 8:00 pm on...actually, screw it. Wake us up when the AMAs come around, now that's a fuckin' party!