Bloodhound Gang figured out a while back how to get the rock star treatment without having to sell 10 million records: Play where the other guy won't.

''We were the first band in four years to play in Iceland,'' recalled guitarist Lupus. ''Five thousand kids came to the show. It was us and Blur. It felt like Beatlemania. I got off the bus and kids were pulling on my backpack, and I was like, 'What are you doing?' It was great for the ego and it was great business-wise.''

Bloodhound Gang's tour in support of its latest CD, ''Hooray for Boobies,'' leaves Iceland off the itinerary, but will cover most of the U.S. and Europe during the next four months. The band's single ''The Bad Touch'' is in heavy rotation on the radio and MTV.

Lupus says the band philosophy in writing their songs--which pull musically from country, hip-hop and punk, and lyrically from the gutter--is simple. ''We like sex, but we're losers and can't get any.'' Which goes a long way toward explaining the ''Ballad of Chasey Lain,'' an ode to the porn star of the same name, or the country-styled tearjerker ''A Lap Dance Is Much Better When the Stripper Is Crying.''

''Remember Daisy Berkowitz [ tickets ], who used to be in Marilyn Manson? He's a friend of ours and he came into town one day when we were in L.A. and it was his birthday, so he and [Bloodhound Gang frontman Jimmy Pop Ali] went to go celebrate,'' Lupus said. ''They went to Crazy Girls in L.A. and Daisy was buying lap dances and he bought a dance for Jim from a beautiful Russian girl. So Jim's chatting with the girl and she said she hadn't been home in a long time, and hadn't seen her mother or grandmother in a long time. She's still going through the motions the whole time, so she was half-naked and crying. Jim was like, 'Hold on,' and got an idea for a song. It's kind of sick and twisted...''

Recorded in Northridge, CA, ''two blocks'' from the epicenter of the earthquake that rocked that region earlier this decade, Lupus said the band worked on "Hooray for Boobies" in what has become its usual fashion. ''Jim writes 99 percent of it and then we all go back and clean things up. We always do the music first and put the lyrics in later. Lately, we've been trying collaborative writing, which involves jamming, but that's bad for us because we don't do it well. We'll play for hours and then we'll hear one piece and be like, 'Stop. What was that?' play it again and work from there, and put some stupid lyrics on it.''