Songfacts®:

• "Boy" was the first song Killers frontman Brandon Flowers wrote after they had to cancel the Imploding The Mirage tour because of the pandemic. It taps into his adolescence in the rural Utah town of Nephi.
• When Flowers wrote "Boy," he'd recently moved back to Utah and started to make trips to Nephi. "I found that the place I had wanted to get away from so desperately at 16 was now a place that I couldn't stop returning to. I have a son approaching the age I was at that time in my life. With 'boy', I want to reach out and tell myself – and my sons – to not overthink it. And to look for the 'white arrows' in their lives. For me now, white arrows are my wife, children, my songs and the stage."
• The Killers' 2021 album Pressure Machine is an examination of Flowers' childhood in Nephi. The singer wrote "Boy" before Pressure Machine, but the themes explored in the song's lyrics led him to write the album. However, the anthemic sound of "Boy" differed from the folk-rock material on Pressure Machine, so it didn't make it onto the record. Instead, The Killers released it as a single on August 5, 2022.
  
  "Its absence is not a reflection of the quality of the song," Flowers told NME. "It was an aesthetic decision to keep it off the record."
  
  "There's an optimism to it," he added. "It's in the dust, it's in the gutter, and it's looking at the stars. It's writing in more of a new wave vehicle."
• Flowers wrote the stadium-filling anthem with his longtime collaborator Stuart Price, who co-produced The Killers' entire Day & Age album and Flowers' solo Flamingo record. Price co-produced the song with Pressure Machine co-producer Shawn Everett.
• The Killers debuted "Boy" during their July 7, 2022 headline performance at the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid. "Do you wanna be the first to hear us play a new song right now? It goes like this," Flowers told the audience before playing the song.
• When "Boy" climbed to #1 on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart, it became The Killers' third visit to the survey's summit. They previously ascended to the top spot in 2006 with "When You Were Young" and in 2020 with "Caution."
  
  "Boy" also reached the top of the Adult Alternative Airplay chart, becoming The Killers' first song to reign on both tallies.