Here is an interesting track by track, blow by blow description for "How to sound like the Killers". This may have come from Computer Music site, but I can't actually remember where I found it now. All songs are from the Killers debut album, Hot Fuss.

Track 1
“Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” opens with a barrage of assorted analog noise including flanged noise radio static, a classic white noise helicopter (made by assigning a triangle-wave LFO to the filter cutoff frequency), and some pitch-bent, polyphonic portamento madness. During the verses and the instrumental break, we hear a synth melody that makes use of a detuned dual-oscillator sawtooth patch, reminiscent of the Cars’ “Moving In Stereo.”

Track 2
“Mr. Brightside” lays low on the synths until the pre-chorus when a poppy analog sound enters playing an eighth-note counterbass; its mix of sawtooth and pulse waves allows it to poke above the mix nicely. This sound uses a quick envelope and could be made using any modern virtual analog such as the Nord Lead or Alesis Ion. At 1:24 we have an analog synth solo in the classic Roland Jupiter synth vein; here Brandon makes use of unison detuned sawtooth oscillators stacked in octaves. This sound pops back in at the songs outro.

Track 3
“Smile Like You Mean It” brings on the vintage synths in the intro, first with warm, Prophet-5-like dual oscillator sawtooth string in the left channel, and then in the right with a delayed and distorted synth lead that leans heavy on the glide. During the bridge section (around 2:18 ), those sneaky Vegas guys throw us some vocoder-processed vocals. The chords of the vocoder vox are intentionally somewhat atonal to add to the bridge’s menacing quality.

Track 4
“Somebody Told Me” is their blockbuster hit, and the intro busts out with dark techno bass filter sweeps in the left channel and phaser-heavy octave glides in the right channel. These sound a lot like the Access Virus sounds featured so prominently in the work of techno genius BT. Try setting your oscillators to sawtooth waves, stack ‘em in unison detuned mode, and go heavy on the glide and effects (especially the phaser), and you’ll be there.

Track 5
The Killers go retro in “All These Things I’ve Done,” a vaguely T-Rex-ian throwback. A lonesome reverbed piano opens this track, while one note of wispy analog synth fades in beneath. It makes use of the “ringing oscillator” sound you get by cranking the filter’s resonance high enough so that it makes sound. Feed some white noise in as well to recreate this wispy tonality. We then have a good old Hammond B-3, heavy on the slow Leslie effect. At 0:37 there’s an equally majestic Roland Jupiter-type large, mellow synth pad.

Track 6
With “Andy You’re a Star,” we have the return of the warm Jupiter pad playing some smooth chords to accompany the muscular guitar riffing. We also hear some fat synth bass. This bass sound makes use of a couple of oscillators set to square waves, with a bit of hipass EQ, since the lows get real big real quick. There’s some cool fast-opening filter action to give this part some spit.

Track 7
“On Top” really heaps on the old-school ‘80s synths with a dual-sawtooth sound run through a heavy delay for a full “Send Me an Angel” effect (by Real Life, not the Scorpions!). The oscillators are really tightly tuned; thay’re just a tiny bit off from each other so they almost sound synced. You can hear a little distortion too, reminiscent of a Moog filter, or maybe a pushed mic pre — either way this is a pleasing effect. In the chorus we hear a sawtooth lead synth with some glide and a bit of reverb for color. After the bridge at 3:02, a subtle synth solo makes use of a Roland Jupiter-like mellow string tone. And at the stop at 3:33, we hear a mad oscillator sync sound, created by turning on “hard sync” and going nuts with pitch.

Track 8
In the mid-tempo rocker “Change Your Mind,” there’s a nifty lead synth that sounds like a sawtooth/square wave hybrid run through a bit of tube distortion for color. At 1:36 we here a unique gliss that sounds like a heavily processed piano played with a downward smear. Tricky! Immediately after this, we’re treated to some classic ‘80s polysynth strings sounding just like, well, heaven, for the full Cure effect.

Track 9
“Believe Me Natalie” opens with high strings that soar over the whole track. These are joined by some decidedly modern chordal synth tones featuring pulsating, panning filter motion. Afterward the analog strings take over briefly, giving us more slowly evolving chordal melodies. The chorus delivers more vintage ’80s analog string melodies. In the bridge we hear some processed piano outlining the section’s chords. This pretty track closes with the elaborate, modulating patch from the intro.

Track 10
“Midnight Show” opens with a cool, swept highpass filtered synth tone using sawtooth wave oscillators, and a filter in highpass mode with cranked-up resonance. Toward the end we hear analog string melodies layered in octaves, along with what sounds like real string samples of cellos at the very end.

Track 11
“Everything Will Be Alright” is a hauntingly beautiful track, evoking early Roxy Music/Brian Eno — and that’s not a bad thing at all. The main left-channel melody tricks you into thinking it’s a keyboard, but in reality it’s guitar played with an E-bow, a cool little magnetic string-vibrating doodad (ask your guitarist, they’ll know!). In the right channel we have a vaguely organ-like synth with a digital wave rolling and in out, reminiscent of a Korg Wavestation or Native Instruments Absynth. The whole track floats over a thick, mellow saw pad with the filter cutoff closed down real low. And at 2:13, a plinky square wave synth enters playing pretty melodies.