The Killers gave Spike Lee "full creative control" over the music video for their anti-Trump song ‘Land Of The Free’.
Brandon Flowers and co recently dropped the politically-charged anthem, which saw the 61-year-old Academy Award-winner at the helm, about the US-Mexican border wall, gun violence and incarceration.
The ‘Somebody Told Me’ rockers spent several weeks with the ‘BlacKkKlansman’ director towards the end of last year, visiting the America/Mexico border to capture real-life footage of migrants families making the journey to the supposed "land of the free".
Brandon has said he felt compelled to pen the track after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut in 2012, and those that followed in his hometown of Las Vegas, Orlando and Parkland.
Speaking about the song to Zane Lowe on Beats 1 radio, the 37-year-old frontman explained:
"I think it’s a very important time right now and enough was enough is basically where it comes from.
"It started in my mind, around when [the] Sandy Hook [shooting] happened and as a father how that affected me and then it just started stacking up.
"It was things like Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, things like what’s happening at [the Mexico border] wall.
"This stuff didn’t seem to be in harmony with the values that I believe my country was founded on."
Brandon initially felt "inadequate" to write the song, but just had to get it of this chest.
He added: "I would start the song and then I would put it away and say ‘I’m not the guy to do this.
"I feel inadequate, someone is gonna write this song’ and then it just piled up with Las Vegas, Orlando, Parkland [shootings]. It just kept coming and I just thought , ‘I have to get this out’."
A press release for the track describe the song as "a heartfelt lament inspired by current events and recent national tragedies."
One line about the gun crisis in the country sees Brandon sing: "So how many daughters?/Tell me how many sons/Do we have to put in the ground/Before we just break down and face it?/ We’ve got a problem with guns/ In the land of the free."
The heart-wrenching song was recorded at the Las Vegas band’s very own Battle Born Studios in Nevada, and is produced by long-time collaborate Jacknife Lee, with additional gospel vocals by Lynn Mabry, Dorian Holley, Will Wheaton, Sherree Patrice Brown, Akasha Mabry and Killers’ touring vocalists Amanda Brown, Danielle René Withers and Erica Canales.
The new stand-alone track is the band’s first since the band’s 2017 LP ‘Wonderful Wonderful’ and is available to stream on all major platforms now.
The Killers gave Spike Lee full reigns over Land Of The Free video
