The title track from The Killers' fourth studio album is both the name of the band's own studio and a nickname for their home state of Nevada, which joined the union during the battle-torn Civil War. Frontman Brandon Flowers explained to The Independent on Sunday he used the title as both a credo to live by, and a creative spur. "I think of it as a call to arms," he said. "We have a lot of references like that [on the album]. It's like a positive kick in the ass. It's a wake-up call of sorts. Whenever I was struggling for anything lyrically, it helped just to go to that phrase. And it can apply to so much more than combat, and it's definitely the thread through this whole record."

The song features the Las Vegas Master Singers. Frontman Brandon Flowers recalled to the Spotify streaming site: "We did a song for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows movie, a track by The Raspberries called 'Go All The Way.' It has these crazy vocal arrangement on the choruses and we would sit and listen to them over and over again trying to work out what the dude was doing. So we took that idea and put it on the end of Battle Born."