Don't be fooled by their retro threads and the the in their name: The Killers threaten to pry dance rock from the steely grip of hipsterdom and thrust it unrepentantly into the mainstream. The Rapture are artier, and Franz Ferdinand are more, well, Scottish, but this Las Vegas band has actual pop songs — in spades. A nightclub anthem in the making, the acid-tongued "Somebody Told Me" blasts into outer space on a wave of synthesizers and singer Brandon Flowers' cheeky chorus: "Somebody told me you had a boyfriend/Who looked like a girlfriend/That I had in February of last year." "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" comes on like classic Duran Duran, all snaking bass lines and Flowers' elegantly wasted vocals — part ironic detachment, part fake-British-accent, part throat-shredding wail. This album is all Killers, no filler.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.