"The initial seeds of the project was when I'd been working on my guitar-playing a lot, and my brother Zack and I � Zack is an amazing jazz musician so I'm learning a lot from him � we had planned to have like a just for fun kind of jam band," Hexum told Radio.com. "We just did some instrumentals kind of in the style of [bands] like the Meters and Medeski, Martin & Wood. We'd also been doing outside songwriting for whatever artist was looking for songs at the time. I was like, let's just combine these two concepts and write songs for this funk project. So it was real organic."

Hexum used the opportunity to partner with a number of different collaborators, including Sugarcult's Tim Pagnotta (who produced two songs), Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin and New York songwriting duo S*A*M and Sluggo, who've worked with The Academy Is� and Gym Class Heroes.

"I picked up a lot of new tricks, a lot of new funny little phrases, like Tim would say, 'When we get to the bridge and it gets quiet, that's the panty-drop section,'" Hexum joked.

While the 311 frontman claimed not to trust himself when it comes to picking singles ("I kind of leave that up to management and the radio team that we've put together"), he said that for this album, the reggae-tinged lead track � "Super Natural" � seemed to be the most obvious choice for the Quintet.

"The chords are based on Pachelbel's classical song 'Canon in D,' which is often played at weddings, so it's a romantic song right there," he explained of the tune's easily recognizable refrain. "Once I realized it was this classical song, I started quoting the melody in the guitar solo and stuff. So it's a bit familiar, because it's this song that's been embraced for hundreds of years, but then having it with a very organ-heavy, kind of jazz band, but then it's a reggae groove, so it's a new combination for me. People were connecting with it, so I decided that would be the single."