College and needs to concentrate. But still, as Flowers drives east on US 460, he's surprisingly upbeat about his newfound - and somewhat obtrusive- flock of female fans.

"It's pretty funny. And it doesn't hurt with all the girls," Flowers laughed. "I mean, girls throw themselves at me all the time anyway because they see my striking features, but now there's a whole new crowd of girls who want to talk to me."

Meet Brandon Flowers, a 20-year-old junior at Lynchburg College in central Virginia, who's pretty much like every dude you ever went to college with, with one notable exception: He just happens to have the same name as the diminutive, usually sequined frontman of the Killers. He wasn't aware of this fact until a few months ago, when an overzealous Killers fan accosted him over AOL Instant Messenger, bombarding him with no less than 50 messages within 20 minutes.

"I got an IM from this girl who was like, 'OMG are you the singer in the Killers?!?' and I tried to tell her that I had no idea what she was talking about, but she kept on bugging me," Flowers sighed. "And after like three different people did that to me, I had to add to my profile that I wasn't the singer of the band. Then like a week ago, my girlfriend found my picture on some Killers fan site, and all these people were writing that it was a photo of Brandon Flowers back in high school. And I'm like, 'Dude, that's me!' "

Suddenly Flowers' priorities changed. Where he had once been content to spend his days studying, partying and playing forward on Lynchburg's men's soccer team, he now had a new purpose in life: to try and exploit his namesake for all it was worth. Which, as it turns out, isn't a whole lot.

"Yeah, at first I thought that maybe I could get some money from him or something," Flowers said. "But that never happened. So then I figured I could get some tickets to a Killers show. And me and my buddy are really trying to get on 'The Real World,' so maybe this could help with that, too."

Probably not. And while Flowers isn't exactly a fan of the Killers' music- he prefers the rather unlikely combo of 50 Cent and country crooner Brad Paisley — or Flowers' onstage method of dress ("I'd never wear eyeliner or sparkly stuff like that," he laughed. "I'm more of a J. Crew type of guy"), he is thankful for one thing: After 20 years of causing him nothing but grief, his name is finally cool.

"I used to get picked on all the time when I was a kid because of my name," Flowers laughed. "But now it's like revenge to all those people who used to make fun of it. Because 'Brandon Flowers' is a cool name. Well, maybe not the 'Flowers' part, but definitely 'Brandon,' because it stands for dominance and masculinity and strength. And I'm definitely all of those things."

- James Montgomery