The Killers guitarist Dave Keuning has been on hiatus from the band since 2017, but an Instagram Live video posted earlier this year seemed to indicate that he’d reunited with the “Mr. Brightside” rockers in the studio. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Keuning opens up about how the recording session came to be and his current status with the group.

“Something came up and we hadn’t had much contact in a couple years,” Keuning explains. “I think it was kind of the pandemic, actually. They were about to go on tour before the pandemic and that tour was cancelled. And then they reached out.”

“They were working on a record because they had all this time on their hands, and they asked if I wanted to be a part of it,” he continues. “I said, ‘I’ll try.'”

While Keuning did not play on The Killers’ latest album, 2020’s Imploding Mirage, he says that “some songs” on the upcoming record feature “an idea that I came up with or worked on.”

“There’s probably two of those,” Keuning says. “A lot of these were songs that were already written.”

“I don’t want to give too much away because that would be unfair to the guys that are going to do interviews about the material, but it’s kind of a concept record,” he adds. “So any material written for it had to fit with it.”

Part of the reason Keuning left The Killers was due to touring burnout, but he feels he’s now ready to rejoin them on the road if they ask.

“I would like to,” he says. “It has been brought up…I think I will. I just don’t want to announce anything. I feel like I’ll jinx myself if I do. But I definitely miss playing the shows.”