Luke Hemmings Has 'Finally Found a Sound' with 'Melancholy' Second Solo Project, “boy” (Exclusive)

"I have a tendency to write pretty emotionally dark things, and I didn't want it to feel like a sad body of work," he tells PEOPLE of the 7-song EP

Luke Hemmings wasn’t sure if he could be a standalone artist.

After close to 15 years of touring and making music with 5 Seconds of Summer, the band’s lead singer released his first album of solo music following the pandemic, after finding himself at rest for the first time in essentially a decade. When Facing The Things We Turn Away From was an amalgamation of musings and feelings Hemmings, 27, had amassed during his years on the road with his bandmates, Calum Hood, Ashton Irwin and Michael Clifford. The 12-song album was the result of an “anomaly of a time,” he tells PEOPLE, his first chance to "reflect" after being "pretty much nonstop" since he was 15.

"A lot of those songs were written out of necessity of trying to understand my own psyche and how I got there and all those existential questions that you can face in a time like that," he says of the album.

Now, with his second solo endeavor, the 7-song EP boy, Hemmings is asserting himself as a standalone name that exists outside the bounds of his boyband — but he admits he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to do it a second time around.

“Coming into making these songs, I wasn't sure whether I could make something like the first album again on my own, or something I liked as much,” he says. “So I tentatively was writing stuff. I'm always writing stuff, but I was like, ‘All right, I'm going to try and see what comes out, see if I can find what this sound is I'm looking for,’ and taking things from the first album that I really loved.”

The EP started out of a desire to “expand” on When Facing The Things We Turn Away From, and capitalize on it, in a sense. Hemmings says he wanted to “see what else I could do, and see if it wasn't just a fluke of the times” the first time around.

Related: 5SOS' Luke Hemmings Announces First Solo Album: It 'Allowed me to Decipher the Last 10 Years'

It’s a more sonically consistent project, and the Sydney, Australia native is breathing a sigh of relief. “Getting to the end of this process and having these songs done and loving them more than the first album, I feel really accomplished and fulfilled because of that.”

“I feel like I've found a sound, more of a sound of what it is,” he continues of boy. “That's always destined to grow and change, but I do feel like it has more of a straight to the point, 'this is what it is,’ sort of feeling to it. And that's really exciting because as you grow as an artist, that's kind of what you're trying to get to.”

“The songs are better, I think they sound better, and I think it feels more refined, but it's also scary because it's not just, ‘We were in COVID and I made these songs.’ It's more of an intentional like, ‘OK, I'm having a bit of a swing at it.’ ”

Hemmings was consciously taking a “swing” at the solo thing this time around, but the songs on boy still came about from a similar place.

"I was moving around a lot at the time, traveling, and I sort of felt a bit emotionally exhausted and a bit disorientated," he says of the period from late 2022 through 2023 when he began writing.

He was on tour with 5SOS, “there was lots going on," and ideas were floating around in his head that he just couldn’t shake.

“It was sort of always in the back of my mind of, ‘I really want to want to get this thing that I can see and hear in my head and I wanted to get it out,’ so I'd come back to it every, whatever it was, every couple months or so, and have these stints of writing periods and more intense periods, and then I would have a bit of space from it, which I actually found really, really lovely."

Compared to his first solo album, which came together in more of a vacuum, “there’s lots of life living in between the songs” on boy.

The space made for a slightly more “frustrating” process, but it helped Hemmings craft a body of work that actually captured the sentiment he was going for.

“I have a tendency to write pretty emotionally dark things, and I didn't want it to feel like a sad body of work,” he admits. “I wanted it to feel in the middle of those two things and feel a bit more how life feels, trying to sum up… I don't know, being human is so — from my experience, it's so up and down and my emotions are intense in both ways from day to day. So I wanted it to feel more melancholy and ride that line.”

Related: 5 Seconds of Summer's Luke Hemmings Confirms He's Married to Sierra Deaton: 'I Love It'

Between his March 6 announcement of the EP and promoting it between then and release day, April 26, Hemmings has not shied away from how laden with emotions the tracks on boy are.

“I wrote these songs at a moment in my life when I found myself questioning everything I thought I knew about the world & myself. All the emotions, fears and grief that came with it,” he wrote on Instagram as he released the first single, “Shakes,” and announced boy.

Writing the songs was “emotionally draining,” he tells PEOPLE. “You don't really know exactly what you're writing about sometimes until it's done, which is interesting. So I think at the time, it's confusing. You have all these sort of existential thoughts bouncing around your head, but being able to make sense of them and put them into something that is artistically beautiful and makes sense to my brain definitely does take a bit of the weight off.”

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Part of what weighed on Hemmings the most throughout the creation process was a deeper question: “Can I write songs on my own?”

He admits it’s a question that guided the origin of “the whole solo thing.”

“I think it honestly allows me to be Luke from 5SOS better, being able to do this. Because I think if not, I would be pulling too many of just my influences into the band, whereas it should be this shared...this thing we all contribute to and it comes out as this collective thing.”

The catalyst, he says, was “to try and get myself better as a songwriter and get things I want out and be able to tell my story.”

“I think I didn't really have time to figure out who I was outside of the band, personally, so this is just the way I work through things,” Hemmings continues. “It allows me to stand on my own two feet and understand myself so I can be in the band and go, ‘OK, I have an understanding of myself better.’ "

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