The 'Reason' is themselves: Hoobastank's Doug Robb not looking for 'perfect' reaction to comeback song

A perfect band may not take nearly a decade to release a new song, but then again, Hoobastank never claimed to be perfect.

"The Reason" outfit has returned with "How Do You Sleep?," marking their first fresh material in eight years. As frontman Doug Robb tells ABC Audio, the band members had continued to write following the release of their last album, 2018's Push Pull, but nothing really seemed to jump out at them. Then recently they sent a batch of songs to their former producer, Howard Benson, which included "How Do You Sleep?"

"[Benson] heard it, and he was like, 'Dude, this, this sounds like a modern version of you guys from the early 2000s. ... It's awesome,'" Robb says. "He's like, 'I haven't heard this type of, like, conviction in you guys in years.'" 

Robb feels that the energy of the song stems from Hoobastank's approach of writing music for themselves first and foremost.

"We consciously just said, like, 'Dude, can we just write and do stuff that we really enjoy?'" Robb says. "Like, stuff that I would actually want to listen to and get pumped up listening to, even if nobody ever heard it."

Now that "How Do You Sleep?" is out and people have heard it, though, Robb has been avoiding looking up people's reactions to the song.

"If people love it, fantastic," Robb says. "If they think it's the worst song they've heard in their life, fantastic! ... But I don't want it to affect how I feel about what I've done."

He adds, "Nobody's been throwing tomatoes at us when we play the song, so that's good." 

Hoobastank will be playing the Vans Warped Tour in Long Beach, California, on Saturday.

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