UK Alt-Rock Band bôa Releases New Album ‘Whiplash’; “Duvet” Officially Certified Platinum!

October 18, 2024 BY Bailey Vigliaturo

Today, UK alt-rock trio bôa releases their triumphant, long-awaited new album, Whiplash. Produced by Chris Zane (Jack Antonoff, Passion Pit, St. Lucia), Whiplash is a melody-driven 13-song collection referencing the band’s personal highs and lows and our collective cultural unrest. By tackling universal sentiments of pain, solitude, and triumph, Whiplash immediately transcends any generational divide, making bôa feel perpetually fresh. bôa is Jasmine Rodgers (lead vocals/guitar), Alex Caird (bass), and Lee Sullivan (drums). Listen to the new album HERE.

Jasmine shares, “From the first moment in the rehearsal room, we were writing again. Al and I would come up with riffs, and we’d all sketch out a song and build layers. During the songwriting period, I went from being in a loving relationship to having a breakup with someone very important to me. When that happens, you review everything, regret everything, and finally accept it, hopefully accepting yourself again. Some of the lyrics relate to that; some look at things I’m passionate about – how I look at the world, how even now I don’t fit in, the way things could be.”

Since bôa’s 1998 cult favorite “Duvet” resurfaced on TikTok, the song has soundtracked nearly 400,000 videos and gathered over 688 million streams on Spotify. Its resurgence with a new generation of fans inspired bôa to come back together to write and record new music with a renewed sense of passion. Today, the band has gathered more than 1 billion streams across their catalog, while “Duvet” has officially been certified Platinum in North America.

They first introduced Whiplash with the soaring, nostalgic “Walk With Me,” a bright, expansive song enveloped in the optimism of starting over again, followed by the celestial string-laden “Beautiful & Broken,” detailing the liberation of finding peace in your flaws. Jasmine shares, “Some of the lyric-writing has come from a place of me being mixed race and a female in a world where I didn’t feel particularly comfortable. I’m still always reviewing and assessing that. It’s about a really dark time in my brain, talking to the darkness just before you go to sleep when you can’t sleep and are trying to find comfort.”

On the title track, newer fans will recognize the timeless warmth that has made “Duvet” an enduring hit. Drawing on the raw guitar-led sounds that first inspired the band, “Whiplash” delivers hypnotic riffs and emotive lyricism, led by Jasmine’s musings on existing with both the good and the bad and accepting people as they are. Drawing on this form of lyricism, the introspective “Vienna” is a delicate reflection on the ending of relationships, where Jasmine’s own life and those around her have shaped her artistic observances. bôa has built its global following on exploring unique wistfulness in songwriting — outlined, at turns, by fading hurt and the promise of hope.

Fresh off the heels of their sold-out debut North American tour, which included stops in Los Angeles at the Fonda and two nights in New York at The Warsaw, bôa just launched their sold-out UK/EU tour in Bristol at Thekla yesterday and have an official album release show tonight in Birmingham at 02 Institute2. They’ll head to Australia at the end of November and then will return to Europe for additional dates in February 2025. More information can be found below and on their official website here.