In speaking to Incubus [ tickets ] frontman Brandon Boyd, it's clear that he loves what he does, whether it's indulging in his artwork or his music.

"I feel very grateful that there are people out there that are interested in things that I'm singing about, things that I'm saying, things that I'm coming out with, enough so that I can keep doing it," Boyd said in an interview with LiveDaily. "Thank you to everybody who has checked it out."

On June 16, fans can check out "Monuments and Melodies," a two-disc collection of the band's greatest hits and rarities. Incubus has spawned 12 Top 10 hits--four of those landing at No. 1--and six studio albums, the most recent being "Light Grenades," which debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200, marking the highest charting debut of the band's career.

Boyd spoke to LiveDaily about Incubus' forthcoming tour, "Monuments and Melodies" and the success of the single "Love Hurts."

LiveDaily: Are you looking forward to your tour?

Brandon Boyd: I really am, actually. By the time we get on the road, it will have been over a year since we've played any shows. So I'm very much enjoying being home, being that [up until] a year ago it wasn't an experience that I got to revel in very much. Now that I've been home for a year, I'm ready to go back out on the road. What's going to be good, though, is we will have been fully re-energized, very rested and ready to take the world again.

Are you surprised at the success of "Love Hurts"? From what I understand, that wasn't originally planned as a single.

I wouldn't say "surprised" is the right word. I'm very glad for it. Let's put it that way. It was a successful song for us overseas, but not without considerable teeth pulling, truth be told. It was doing really well overseas for us about two years ago and we were having a hard time with our label overseas getting them to fully support it, even though it was doing really well on radio, which is strange to me. We ended up making our own video for it and we did the whole thing ourselves. When it started getting really successful overseas, there was something kind of great about it because it felt like we did it completely on our own. Then it died down over there. We were on tour, then it started getting picked up in the States--two years after the record comes out. It just kind of put a lovely smile on my face. I was just like, "Aaaah." It is just awesome. I love when that happens.

Why did you decide to name your greatest-hits package "Monuments and Melodies"?

We didn't want to call it "Incubus: Greatest Hits" just so we didn't have to sort of subscribe completely to the notion that it was a greatest-hits record. We're a little bit in denial about that. I'm coming to terms a little bit more now as we speak, but I thought about maybe calling it "Look at the Size of These Hits" or "Don't You Love It When There's This Many Hits in One Room?" Something ridiculous, kind of taking the piss out of the idea. What we were doing was pulling up old board tapes, old demos, trying to find a way to make the album interesting beyond just a greatest-hits package. The song "Monuments and Melodies" sort of arose and the lyric in it kind of--I hadn't listened to the song in a long time, I hadn't thought about the lyric in a long time--there's a lyric in the song "Monuments and Melodies" that refers to where one has been and where one is going, and being sort of in praise of the process of growth. It just seemed like an appropriate title and then nobody in the band argued with me so we called it that. [Laughs]

Why were you not ready to deal with the fact that you have a greatest hits album?

You know, I'm coming to terms with it daily because I think it feels like you really have to acknowledge the fact that you are, number one, no longer a new band, and, number two, you're so not a new band that you have enough material to make a greatest-hits album. It's slightly humbling. I allowed the humbling process to take place and then I decided to get excited about the fact that we've been a band for almost 20 years and none of us have tried to kill each other yet.

Why was now the time for a collection like this?

For lots of reasons. Number one, we have been off the road and off cycle and kind of, for the first time in our 30s, having the chance to really like step away from it and plant some roots at home and move into different phases of our lives. Jose [Padilla], our drummer, has a child, which is just amazing. So the need for us to be home is great. Michael [Einziger, guitarist] went to school this year. He just finished his first year of school. I went back to school briefly. There's all these wonderfully normal things happening that never got to happen for us. So there was that. We weren't going to be putting out a new record any time soon.

Then, there was also the fact that there was an obligatory thing with the record label. Then, there's also the fact that we have been a band for almost 20 years and it's appropriate for us to create this benchmark, as it were, a way for us to signify that this is what we've done thus far. In the general sense of the term, this is what we sound like for the first 20 years, now let's see what happens over the next 20 years. So lots of reasons.

You published two art books. How were you able to balance your artwork with your music? Is it something you do on the road? How exactly does it work?

Yeah, I can't do the big pieces on the road, the largest paintings, that usually is reserved for downtime here in Los Angeles. The majority of the first book is sketches, sketch-book things, and design marker and pen-and-ink and watercolor and photographs--all these things taking place while we were traveling. The second one was a lot of that stuff, but more home time. The visual aspects of art are just as present as the audio aspects. I never really placed too much stress on making the distinctions between the two. There are distinctions, but, for me--I think for most artists--it comes in many different forms. It wears lots of different hats. It does what it wants to do. I'm trying to do my best to not discriminate how the art wants to reveal itself. So there's been two books and hopefully there'll be more.

What is the songwriting process like with Incubus?

I write all the lyrics; [as for] the process, though, there's not any sort of one way that I can describe it that would sum it up. I just know it seems to have a mind of its own. It sort of does what it wants to do. If I were to give the songwriting process a personality, I would say that it's highly bi-polar and a spoiled little brat. But the songwriting process is very cute. Sometimes it can be beautiful and sometimes it can be frustrating but we love it nonetheless. We will continue to spoil it and let it do what it wants to do.

What was it like to work with Brendan O'Brien on the new tracks "Black Heart Inertia" and "Midnight Swim"?

What can I say? Brendan is a magical dude. We love him. We love working with him for many different reasons, not the least of which is that he seems to be very much on the same wavelength as us in the band. He likes to work fast, as we do. When we have an idea that we like, we like to run with it. He, I think, can pick up our enthusiasm for an idea and he can hear when we're committed to it. We like to bang them out quickly and we are in agreeance that if something is taking too long, maybe we're overthinking it. Maybe we should let it stew longer. The good ideas usually happen pretty fast. He's wonderful. We love Brendan. He's working on a Pearl Jam record right now, which is pretty exciting.