Ask Julie Potash if she's happy with where Northern State is today, and she'll reply that she's far more stoked about where the group is going. To fully understand that, it helps to know something about her past.

Along with her fellow Northern State MCs Correne Spero and Robyn "Sprout" Goodmark, Potash (known to her posse as Hesta Prynn) grew up in the middle-class environs of Long Island, New York. Her life today is radically different than those of the kids she and her bandmates went to school with. For a window into that reality, check out the electro-fever rocker "Cold War" off Northern State's third album, Can I Keep This Pen?. Over post-wave synths and metal-tinted guitar sprays, Northern State contends that "Everyone's talking 'bout making money/Everyone's talking 'bout buying houses."

"That song is totally about where we come from, because everyone we grew up with is getting married, having babies, and buying houses," says Potash, on the line from her home base of New York City. "Everyone we are related to is doing the same thing. And we're not. It's stressful sometimes, because you think to yourself, 'Oh my God–am I missing the boat here?' But then I have a second thought: 'Well, you get to spend four months on the road touring each year, acting the fool on-stage every night.' So I'm still into it."

Where Northern State is headed today wasn't so much as hinted at on 2003's Dying in Stereo, where the trio's affection for "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" guitars and nasal class-clown vocals pegged them as the snotty little sisters the Beastie Boys never had. The band's follow-up and major-label debut, All City, rocked the same party, only with a bigger budget. Having the likes of ?uestlove, Pete Rock, and Cypress Hill's Muggs in the producer's chair looked great on hip-hop message boards but didn't do much for sales, getting the band dropped by Sony.

"When we made All City we'd always had this fantasy of working with real hip-hop producers on a real hip-hop record," Potash says. "After we did that, I think that we kind of got over it. It was like, 'Awesome, that's really cool, and now I'm going to write some weird electro songs.'"

Released on Mike Patton's Ipecac imprint, and produced by Chuck Brody and the Beasties' Ad-Rock, Can I Keep This Pen? doesn't completely abandon the '80s-era hip-hop template that first got Northern State noticed. "Oooh Girl", "Mic Tester", and "Good Distance" all throw back to when Roland TR-808s and Brass Monkeys still had cachet. This time out, though, Potash, Spero, and Goodmark decided they wouldn't be hostages to their inner b-girls. "Better Already" takes an irresistibly danceable stab at '80s synth-rock; "Run Off the Road" is dream-pop at its most ethereal, and "Away Away" transplants vintage new wave to the shores of the Caribbean.

"What we did was have this idea of making a record that we might all have fallen asleep and dreamed," Potash says. "Like in 'Away Away', maybe you dreamt you were in a weird Jamaican reggae Cars tip. On other songs, the dream is maybe that you're in an all-girl punk band. That's where we were going with things, and once we started to think that way there were no rules and no labels. And when we put it all together, it was still us."

Or, more accurately a marker for where Northern State is headed: a place that bears little resemblance to where they've been.

Northern State opens for Tegan and Sara at the Commodore on Saturday (September 22).