The Killers
“Bones”
Dir. Tim Burton

For a while, the fidel-capped bloggers weren’t sure about The Killers. But then Brandon Flowers, the band’s lead singer, announced that their 2006 LP would be among the best albums of the past twenty years. And then “Sam’s Town” finally dropped, and it turned out that by “best” Flowers meant “derivative” and “pompous.” Cue the indie backlash.

Now we have the video for second single, “Bones.” It’s not a great song, but that’s okay. Flowers is mostly renowned not for his music but for trashing other bands roughly as good as the Killers, like The Bravery and Fall Out Boy. Also, the aforementioned self-aggrandizement. Also, his penchant for mascara.

What makes Flowers’ grandiose statements particularly unpalatable is the band’s unwavering mediocrity. They quote their influences—80s commercial New Wave on their debut “Hot Fuss,” and now, on “Sam’s Town,” Bruce Springsteen—verbatim, adding nothing new. They steal without contrition, and, what’s worse, without irony.

Picking Tim Burton to direct “Bones,” then, works well, since both he and the Killers are mainstream populists masquerading as alternative visionaries. The song’s bone imagery plays into Burton’s undead fetish, and he directs a tediously straightforward video.

We follow two lovers as they turn into skeletons and send up well-worn cinematic beach love scenes (we need a moratorium on parodies of “From Here to Eternity” and “10”). The girl is Devon Aoki, of “Sin City” fame; she looks bored. Probably because Burton can’t make Flowers interesting. He moves woodenly. He may have the looks of a frontman, but not the charm, and this video exposes his bare-bones talent.

But, in the end, Burton does kill The Killers. We get a lingering last shot of their disassembled bones lying on the ground; and for that, at least, the indie kids can be thankful.