Life in the indie-rock spotlight isn’t easy for Wavves singer Nathan Williams. By all rights, he should be ecstatic: his newly released third album, King of the Beach, is garnering rave reviews from blogs and glossies alike, and he and his bandmates are embarking on a headlining tour of North America. But the 24-year-old California native still finds cause to complain, admitting that the grind of the music business clashes with his laid-back lifestyle.

“It’s been a lot of work,” he says, on the line from his home in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. “I really enjoy when I get some time off to chill at my house. It’s good going around [on tour], but I like the time off, too.”

Williams is nonchalant when he explains how he likes to spend his days of relaxation. “I’m pretty much just hanging out at my house, playing video games and such. Smoking weed. 4:20-ing.”

When he answers the Georgia Straight’s call, the singer is doing just that. As his bandmates, drummer Billy Hayes and bassist Stephen Pope, talk loudly in the background, Williams spends much of the conversation playing a video game on his PlayStation.

“I’m getting fucking killed right now in this video game,” he yells. “It’s embarrassing!” He’s playing FIFA Soccer 10, and is being beaten 5–0. “You made me lose. I don’t appreciate that,” he grumbles. It’s hard to tell if he’s joking.

Last year, Williams’s hard-partying ways got the better of him. In May 2009, just months after his two home-recorded albums (the similarly titled Wavves and Wavvves) turned him into a blog sensation, the singer had an on-stage meltdown at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival, having taken a cocktail of ecstasy, Valium, and Xanax before the set. The disastrous gig culminated in then-drummer Ryan Ulsh storming off-stage after only a few songs, with Williams hollering obscenities in his wake.

News of the calamitous performance spread quickly, and former supporters slammed Williams’s apparent inability to cope with success. When the subject of his detractors is broached, the singer scoffs, “Those people have no dicks, or dicks in their asses, so it doesn’t really matter either way.” Then, catching himself, he lightens his tone. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “I mean, media, media, media, schmedia.”

A few minutes after these comments, the frontman hands the phone off to Hayes, who offers his own perspective on the incident. At the time, he and Pope were playing with the late punk upstart Jay Reatard. The pair met Williams for the first time that same day.

“It was not a big deal. Anybody who’s ever toured at all or gone to shows has seen someone fucked-up on drugs and alcohol,” Hayes insists. “I know people who get like that every night. Usually, all we do is smoke weed and drink beer anyway.”

As for the media frenzy, he says it was unwarranted. “The next day, a lot of people were asking us about it. I never really gave a shit, it was really weird. Everyone had an opinion on it who wasn’t even there.”

Williams later apologized for the breakdown, but his best response to the critics came more than a year later with the release of King of the Beach. An overhaul of his scuzzy, lo-fi sound, the album channels the spirit of California skate punk with a warped, experimental edge. While bratty slacker anthems like “Post Acid” and “Idiot” aren’t a huge stylistic or thematic departure from his past work, the album’s studio-crafted sparkle and full-bodied arrangements allow the songwriter’s catchy pop hooks to rise above the din.

Although part of the credit for this new and improved sound belongs to Hayes and Pope, Williams says that producer Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse, the Hives) is most responsible for the LP’s polished style. “He’d make us play a part, like, 50 times,” the frontman recalls. “Normally, I would have played it once.”

Listeners can hear evidence of the producer’s meticulous approach in “Green Eyes”, with its gentle, glockenspiel-bolstered verses and explosive, distortion-soaked refrain. “Mickey Mouse” is similarly lush, evoking Animal Collective with hypnotic loops, woozy vocal filters, and beach-ready harmonies.

The album was recorded over two months at Herring’s Sweet Tea recording studio in Oxford, Mississippi. Speaking about the process, Hayes confirms Williams’s assessment that it was harder work than the band members were used to. “We spent almost every day, all day there, just recording, doing tracking all day,” he says. “It was more than we would have done to make a record by ourselves.”

Still, the musicians found plenty of opportunities to kick back while in the studio. “We smoked, like, a quarter-pound when we were down there,” the drummer recalls.

Now, with King of the Beach available everywhere, Williams has won the critics over once more. This time, however, he says he’s better equipped for the attention. “I think I’m more relaxed now. I think I’m just taking it all in stride. I’m having more fun with it,” he reflects. And while he still prefers hanging out to going on tour, he concedes, “It’s better than any other career I could have done.” The singer, it seems, is in it for the long haul.

But Hayes has a different take. “We’ll probably be playing for a while. Till Nathan loses it. Then it will all be over,” he quips. “I think he’s going to have a big meltdown in 2012.”

Wavves plays the Biltmore Cabaret next Thursday (August 26).