When Dave Keuning decided to step away from The Killers, it wasn’t about burning bridges – it was about finding himself again. As one of the band’s founding members and a driving force behind their biggest hits, Keuning was caught in the grind of the machine: endless touring, recording, and the relentless demand to keep pushing forward. But at some point, he realized that the joy of making music was starting to fade.
“I felt like I almost had no choice,” Keuning admits. “I was like, I can’t do this whole tour. It was kind of an all-or-nothing ultimatum. So I was like, okay, well then I guess I can’t do it.”
His debut solo album, Prismism, recorded under his last name only, is a collection of songs that have been in the works for years – some dating back to random hotel room voice memos from a decade ago. “I taped it as a voice memo and had to go searching deep to find that one,” he says of the track “Hope and Safety.” “It was just something I was playing around with in a hotel room like 10 years ago.”
Dave jokes that he had to go on a scavenger hunt through old recordings to find forgotten ideas, but the effort paid off. Tracks like “Boat Accident” may have nothing to do with their titles – a byproduct of quickly naming Pro Tools files. “One of the mistakes I made this time around was having a bunch of song titles that have nothing to do with the song,” he laughs. “I think I’m going to try and change that next time around because no one knows what I’m talking about.”
The freedom to experiment was both liberating and daunting. Without bandmates to bounce ideas off, Keuning had to trust his instincts, leaning into his love for guitar-heavy sounds while embracing his unexpected knack for keyboards. He’s honest about the challenge of finding his own voice – not just musically, but emotionally. “I know when I’m on to something good,” he says. “But then there’s also that doubt: Is this as good as I thought it was?”
Keuning also opens up about the difficult decision to leave The Killers, a band he helped build from the ground up. While it’s strange to see them moving forward without him, he knows it was necessary for his own sanity. “It’s a machine that just couldn’t stop,” he explains. “Once they want to tour, they want to tour for like a year and a half because they want to make money… I wasn’t willing to go a full like two years or even a year and a half. It was just a lot to swallow at once.”
And the weirdness of watching it continue without him? “It’s a little weird,” he admits. “It’s something I wrestle with in my mind. I don’t know quite how to feel about it. But it’s a machine, and that’s kind of what happened with the touring… I know what it’s like. I’ve done that four other times where I did the whole two-year tour.”
One unexpected boost during the album’s creation came from what Keuning calls “shock therapy” – a technique that left him feeling clearer and more creatively energized. “It kind of shocked the cobwebs out of me,” he explains. “I felt like I was more creative after. I don’t know if that was like a placebo effect or if it was real, but I felt like I wrote a lot of stuff after that in a small amount of time.”
Keuning’s also gotten some inspiration from his own rock heroes, like The Smashing Pumpkins and Queen. “People thought the whole record was going to be like a heavy metal record or something,” he laughs. “But I’m always going to have guitar-heavy songs. That’s never going to change. I’m not going to bend to trends.”
As for the future, Keuning says he’s still trying to figure out how to balance his love of dense studio tracks with the reality of performing them live. “Some of my favorite guitar parts on the record I’m not able to play because they’re too tricky for me to sing at the same time, which is a bummer,” he admits. “But I’m not going to change the songs just to make them easier. I’d rather figure out a way to make it work.”
For a musician who’s spent most of his career playing stadiums, it’s a raw and personal journey back to where it all started – making music for the love of it. Prismism isn’t just an album; it’s a statement of independence and a declaration that there’s life after the machine. As Keuning says, it’s about finding balance – between the past and the future, between artistic freedom and the pressure to deliver. And most importantly, between being part of something big and finding his own place within it.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below!
