Even before he duetted with Brandon Flowers on this new version of 2008’s “A Dustland Fairytale,” you could hear Bruce Springsteen in the Killers’ music. “The good old days, the honest man, the restless heart, the promised land,” Flowers sang 15 years ago, in one of the band’s best songs, as if fast-forwarding through Springsteen’s songbook to summon him like Beetlejuice. Back then, Flowers spoke about wanting to write his generation’s Born to Run. Instead, he wrote anthems about wanting to write Born to Run, and a sea of fans saw themselves in his wild, passionate pursuit of greatness.

You can count among their fans Springsteen himself, who kickstarted this collaboration over text pre-pandemic last year (“You have become one hellacious live band, my brother! Love the gold suit!”), adding that “A Dustland Fairytale” was his favorite Killers song. In an endearing note to fans, Flowers reveals that he wrote the lyrics for his mother, after she had been diagnosed with cancer. Turning away from the Vegas glamour of the band’s more familiar material, Flowers took inspiration from Springsteen’s portraits of everyday people and their ordinary struggles.

That being said, “Dustland” is anything but ordinary. Like the Killers’ best songs, it is so full of fireworks and drama that it feels both like a song and the theme park ride inspired by it: pop-up appearances from God, the devil, Cinderella; landmarks including the Castle in the Sky, Kingdom Under Siege, and the Midnight Sun (where, of course, there is still a little bit of magic). You can see what Springsteen likes about it. As the stakes increase, the band seems to grow in size, like the mini-opera of “Rosalita” revamped for Born in the U.S.A.’s arenas. Springsteen and Flowers don’t so much harmonize as trade lines, their voices never blending but following one another like shadows. It ends up feeling ragged but right for the material, adding a sense of spontaneity and breathless desperation—two broken heroes meeting up somewhere along their last-chance power drives.