"There was definitely a feeling because the music came really easy, in 20 minutes," Beddoe said during a recent interview with LiveDaily.

"I don't know if I knew it was going to be a smash radio hit. I'm not sure I know what that is. I don't think I'll ever know. But I think we definitely thought we had written something cool and different. It definitely got me excited. Looking back, we spent a little more time on it, sort of anticipating this potentially could do well on the radio. But you never really know. I think if you knew you'd have a million hits. Basically, you just wish for the best, write something you believe in, something that's fun to play, and hope people like it."

Fans sure seem to like it. The gold-certified single peaked at No. 6 on The Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Not only is it a hit on radio, it has received 4.1 million plays on Finger Eleven's MySpace page. The follow-up single, "Falling On," is slowly rising up the charts and boasts 1.4 million plays on MySpace.

This isn't the first hit for Finger Eleven, who just received a Juno nomination for Group of the Year. (The Junos ceremony, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys, is set for April 6 in Calgary.) The band's 2003 self-titled album included the simple ballad "One Thing," which hit No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and helped propel the CD to gold status in the United States.

Four years later, the band has returned with the Johnny K-produced "Them Vs. You Vs. Me," which spawned "Paralyzer" and "Falling On." Finger Eleven--which also includes vocalist Scott Anderson, guitarists James Black and Rick Jackett, and bassist Sean Anderson--will soon tour with headliners Chevelle [ tickets ]. The tour was scheduled to kick off Feb. 19 at Flint's Machine Shop, however, Anderson is recovering from mono. The new dates are listed below.

Fans are vital to Finger Eleven, whether the members see them at shows or out and about. To stay in touch with them, Finger Eleven set up a Skype internet phone line in the studio during the recording processes for "Finger Eleven" and "Them Vs. You Vs. Me" so followers could reach out and touch the band whenever they liked.

"It was really cool," Beddoe said. "It was fun. You go away for a year or so and write music, get back in the studio, and a lot of times you lose touch with fans. But fans think this is cool that we're doing that for them.

"It's a 50/50 thing. After that much time off, you're in there making records and it's kind of nice to get calls from people who are expressing they're excited or pumped about this new album. It's a really inspiring thing to do when you're making a record. It gives you a little bit of confidence that people are still interested in what you're doing."

Beddoe said Finger Eleven received plenty of "really fun" late-night phone conversations from random people around the world, including, apparently, a molecular engineer. Beddoe admitted the caller probably didn't know who Finger Eleven was.

"We all sat around the phone listening to this guy. I thought, 'Man if this guy wanted to, he could probably destroy the world. He's a future mad scientist. If he's diabolic, he's could plan to do something evil.' He was a little scary but at the same time you could tell this guy was a genius. For whatever reason, he found our number and called us. I think he was just looking for someone to talk to. That was bizarre."

For "Them Vs. You Vs. Me," Finger Eleven came up with ideas for about 100 songs and gradually whittled it down to 11.

"All five of us were writing so much. All of us were being creative at the same time. At the end of the day, that's how many songs came out. That many songs can never be on the record, obviously. But there was a lot of experimentation. To write a song that's going to make the record, you need to write a few other weird ones to get to that mental space. We had tons of ideas but we knew that they weren't all going to become Finger Eleven songs."