Trio are "very consciously going back to our roots."

Thirty years ago, Susanna Hoffs and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson formed a garage band in Los Angeles. They were the Bangs before they became the Bangles, and they were a jangly power-pop band before they, along with bassist Michael Steele, were the MTV darlings of the later '80s, with such hits as "Manic Monday," "Walk Like An Egyptian," and "Eternal Flame." They parted ways in '89, but they rekindled a decade later.

Steele left after 2003's Doll Revolution, but now the Bangles are back with a surprisingly strong new album, Sweetheart of the Sun, and a tour that begins Saturday night at the Theatre of Living Arts with Antigone Rising, an all-female rock band from New York City. Sweetheart was produced by Matthew Sweet, who had partnered with Hoffs for a pair of covers albums, and it's full of crisp guitars, tight harmony singing, and youthful melodies.

"It really brought us back to the early days, in a way, when we were in that do-it-yourself mode," Susanna Hoffs says from her home in L.A. "The experience of making this record related more to our early, early adventures as young Bangles than a lot of the stuff that happened in the mid- to later part of the '80s."

They recorded most of the album in home studios - Sweet's and their own - and were able to do so inexpensively, at least compared to what they were used to in the '80s. They could work around their own schedules, since they're "working moms," with kids ranging from 7 to college age. And they could "have fun and be spontaneous," says Hoffs.

"One nice thing about getting older is that you kind of get to a point where you say, I just want to follow my bliss. I made it this far, and I just want to enjoy what I'm doing," Hoffs says, laughing. "The stakes aren't as high, in a certain way, to put that pressure on yourself to live up to what you think people's expectations are. It's not a good mind-set when you worry about what other people will think when you're doing music. I think for us, just kind of falling in love again with each others' music and songs and the sounds that we make and our collaboration was really a key part of making this record."