Brandon Flowers has no plans to open a bar in Nashville

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Set us as preferred Brandon Flowers stands onstage at the Ford Theatre wearing a sharp black suit and a bejeweled bolo tie and tells the audience about his cousin Bobby’s job parking cars in the 110-degree heat of the Las Vegas Strip.“That was gonna be me in another life, only my big plan was to work at the Bellagio,” he adds.“Nicer place, more tips.”As the frontman of the Killers, Flowers, 45, has spent more than two decades singing about the struggles and the temptations at the heart of the American dream.

But on his new solo album, “Thrasher,” he trades the Killers’ gleaming, synth-laced rock for the crackling sound of hand-played country music.He cut the LP at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where country giants like Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings once worked; not only that, but to accompany him he recruited veteran session players including David Rawlings, Bruce Bouton and 85-year-old Charlie McCoy, who played harmonica on George Jones’ immortal “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”Yet for all its old-school country cred, “Thrasher” also emphasizes Flowers’ roots as a Vegas showman — his tremulous croon, his go-for-broke emotion, his almost preacherly understanding of how to take a crowd up (and up) and how to take it back down.Think Glen Campbell or Donny Osmond.“Or Wayne Newton,” says Rawlings with admiration.

The guitarist, known for his long collaboration with Gillian Welch, performed with Flowers at July’s Newport Folk Festival.“It’s really thrilling to see the way he inhabits this stuff onstage,” he adds.

“I have such incredible respect for anybody who knows how to entertain at that level because it’s an absolute gift — and it’s really hard work.”Flowers, who grew up in Las Vegas and Utah and who shares three sons with his wife, spoke about the album in his dress...