First live show together

Keuning and Flowers played their first live show together at an open mic night at the Cafe Espresso Roma in Las Vegas in January 2002, where the band was advertised simply as “Killers”. The pair, joined by Neal and Norcross, began playing venues around the city where they handed out free copies of their demo. The Killers brought a unique style to the small Vegas music scene, which was dominated by punk , nu metal , and rap bands ; one local reviewer wrote, “The Killers, thankfully, don’t come across like any other band in town”, and described their sound as a mix between the “pop styles of British music and the lo-fi fuzz of modern indie rock”. By the summer of 2002, the Killers, whose early live sound was also described as erratic, had fired Norcross and briefly replaced him with Brian Havens, who was also eventually fired. Neal later left the band for personal reasons.