London-based, indie-rock band, BÔA, are back performing together after a 20-year-long hiatus and are looking forward to touring the UK once again, including a show at Leeds Stylus on 17 June.
In recent years, the band has re-emerged into the industry following their 2001 song ‘Duvet’ blowing up on TikTok and a whole new audience discovering BÔA’s sound. The band re-released the song in 2023 and have since released a new album: ‘Whiplash’, which they have been touring in America and Europe.
When speaking to the band’s vocalist and guitarist, Jasmine Rodgers, and drummer, Lee Sullivan, ahead of their UK tour starting on 10 June, we discussed all things BÔA, TikTok and tour.
The band met in the early 90’s when they started off playing “jazz-funky kind of stuff” until “powerhouse” Lee came along and brought his own, more “rocky” sound to the band. The name ‘BÔA’, they said, comes from both the Boa snake as well as feather boas.
BÔA was formed in Surrey: “We were in between London and the countryside so we’ve got the best of both worlds and the worst of all of them; we were really bored.” Jasmine and Lee remember taking walks through the trees they lived by after rehearsing with the band through the mid-90s. With both their dads being in bands while they were growing up, Jasmine and Lee were constantly surrounded by different types of music, illustrated through BÔA’s diverse sound.
Their hit track, ‘Duvet’, was originally released in 1998 before they released it again on their album ‘Twilight’ in 2001. The song gained popularity in the late 90’s when it became the opening music for cult-classic anime series, ‘Serial Experiments Lain’. Since then, the whimsical, indie-rock ballad has blown up on TikTok, becoming one of the platform’s most popular sounds and gaining a whole new audience, over 25 years after the song’s original release. “It’s wild but its lovely,” Jasmine told us. It was Lee’s son, who was nine at the time, who told him that the song was becoming popular on TikTok “before it kept getting bigger and bigger.”
When asked about what coming back after 20 years and making their newest album, ‘Whiplash’, was like, Lee remarked on how normal it felt, “It was great – we walked into the studio and we started playing together, we enjoyed it and we were coming out with stuff and it was just like nothing had changed, really.” Jasmine spoke about how she’s adapted to coming back to BÔA, “Having to sing a totally different sound to what I do in my solo music, my solo music is a lot more folk-y and gentle and then with BÔA I get to sing really big, noisy – and have fun with that kind of landscape.”
During the group’s musical hiatus, they have all taken the time to live their lives; little did they know that would lead them to their second rise in fame. During this time, Jasmine earned her degree in Zoology while releasing solo music and Lee became a father, “Having grown up a bit, we’ve been through different life experiences now and Jasmine’s lyrics nail it,” he said.
Discussing what’s next for BÔA, Jasmine told us, “We’re trying to take it easy because for the last two or three years, it’s been really intense. BÔA is coming out with an acoustic version of ‘Whiplash’, “which is exciting because when you record an album, it seems like a permanent record of things, but when you start touring them, you start growing the songs. The musicians we tour with are really amazing and they’ve added their own flavours into it now.”
BÔA is proof that there is no ‘window’ for musicians. ‘Duvet’ is obviously a timeless – perhaps even before its time – piece of music that has struck two generations. With music like theirs, we can be sure BÔA are here to share their talent with us for some time to come.
BÔA is at Stylus on 17 June. Tickets here.
Main image by Angela Ricciardi.
