You can go ahead and call Rooney's new album, Eureka, their declaration of independence. After several years trudging under the weight of a major label deal that never quite fit them right, the Los Angeles band is making a bold, fresh start: Rooney recorded and produced Eureka themselves, and will be releasing the disc June 8th on their own new label, California Dreamin' Records through Warner Music Group's Independent Label Group. The 12-track Eureka is Rooney's most mature, nuanced collection yet, and still retains their classic buoyancy and catchiness.

Though Eureka is, in many ways, a rebirth for Rooney, the independent spirit behind it is nothing new for the band, which began in 1999, when its members were still in high school. During their early years, the band self-produced and promoted a series of EPs and built themselves a massive hometown fan base by gigging as often as they could in local LA clubs. Their self-titled debut album, released in May 2003, maintained a solid presence on Billboard's New Artists chart for several months, and then shot up in 2004 following a performance on teen dramedy The O.C., known for its taste-making assortment of music from critically-acclaimed new bands who had yet to make it mainstream.

Slowly and steadily over the course of two years, Rooney's debut disc amassed sales of nearly 500,000 copies. They began making their second album in 2004, and in the three years that followed, they recorded three album's worth of material before finally releasing Calling The World in 2007. The problem, the band explains, was the ongoing pressure from their label, Geffen/Interscope, to come up with a hit song.

"The whole culture of major labels is to just keep fucking with shit instead of getting something from an artist that's their vision and supporting it and putting it out and promoting it, the old fashioned way," says guitarist Taylor Locke. "We've heard our story from other bands a million times, where you've got the label telling you remix, re-record, try a different producer, try an outside songwriter, do it here, we're pushing it back to spring, back to summer, fall - it's never-ending."

The guys started recording Eureka in April of 2009, in a new studio singer and bassist Robert Schwartzman built into his Los Angeles home. "Part of the fun was just indulging our influences," says keyboardist Louie Stephens. "One of the reasons I'm happy with the record is that I think we were able to do that in a lot of different, varied ways. 'Holding On' has kind of a [Tom] Petty vibe to the arrangement, and 'Only Friend' and 'Into the Blue' have more of a psychedelic thing that we hadn't fully done before. 'The Hunch' is kind of a balls-out rock song, and 'I Can't Get Enough' has got a little bit of a rhythmic thing."

Schwartzman admits he had Petty in mind when he was writing the song. "I was watching Running Down a Dream, the Tom Petty documentary, and it was really inspiring," he says. "I didn't realize how much of Tom Petty's influences came from a lot of the stuff I really love..."

Petty's inspiration served him well: "Holding On," the track that opens Eureka, is not only a classic Rooney-style sing-along, it's also the song that articulates, most directly, how the band has come to view its past, present and future. "The lyric goes, 'It's just another meal, I'm fat with regret, placing my bet on me.' The music industry is such a dirty little world, and we've heard our story from bands a million times, but the song - about holding on when you're on the edge of something - is a wake-up call for us, about entering a new place, a new phase of our career, and breaking away."

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