After a little more than a decade under its belt, it seems Cold War Kids are still musically toying around a bit with what it wants to be when it grows up. But according to frontman Nathan Willett, it feels pretty close to now.

"It feels good," Willett said. "It feels kind of like the best case scenario, probably what any band would want. You’re on tour, but it’s not this grueling tour that’s just for this one set of 11 songs. It’s about the band; the band is on tour, not just the record. It kind of feels like that’s the road we’re on."

It’s been an interesting road for the Long Beach-based rockers, one that currently brings them to Milwaukee for a show at the Pabst Theater on Sunday night. The band came together in 2004 and soon became indie darlings under the umbrella of the growingly popular "blog rock" scene, a vague label given to, as described by Grantland’s Steven Hyden, "young, mostly urban, predominantly white, ostensibly underground rock bands that were closely associated with Internet culture." As for the sound or actual music genre – which runs the gambit of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Animal Collective and Fleet Foxes – it was just as indefinable back then as it is now, even for Willett. 

"It’s strange because it was a scene that wasn’t geographically connected at all," Willett recalled. "We all just happened to be a group of bands picked by a group of bloggers at a time that not many existed. I think if you explained that to a kid now, he’d be like, ‘I don’t get it.’ ‘There were a limited amount of blogs at the time.’ ‘What?’ Style-wise, all of them were uniquely different from each other."

With the help of the blog rock buzz, Cold War Kids’ first album "Robbers & Cowards" became a success, with stompy and bangingly catchy songs like "Hang Me Up To Dry" and "Hospital Beds" turning into hits that you can still hear on college and alternative radio stations to this day. Despite its success, however, it took some time for Willett to become a fan of it.

"We were used to performing live in reverb-drenched tank of noise, and essentially the first record is very clean and tight sounding," the frontman said. "There’s not much reverb, and the vocal is super compressed. I was shocked, and I wasn’t totally sure if I totally loved it for a while. But I knew that other people loved it, and that made me feel strange because I didn’t know that’s how my voice … I didn’t think that’s how it sounded live. I wanted it in reverb and really to go with the music and be drenched in everything else, and when I heard it so directly – with all the flaws and strangeness – it was like, ‘Whoa, OK.’ There was no masking it; it was all right there. I was unsure.

"It took a while for me to realize that I love how that record sounds and how bold it is to have things be that clean and tight and punchy."

The band departed a bit from that original sound on its next album, 2008’s positively received "Loyalty to Loyalty," before moving even further away on 2011’s "Mine Is Yours." Many fans and critics at the time were less than receptive to Cold War Kids’ sonic changes. The AV Club’s Sean O’Neal gave the latter album a D+ rating, writing "Every edge is dulled for maximum accessibility, dominated by guitars blanched in soggy reverb and bombastic, uninspired melodies, while Willett avoids the jagged wails that used to give them anxiety and suspense."

It was tough reaction to register for an album recording process that drove the band "a little crazy," what with its high expectations in combination with the hard time and effort spent on it.

"It was a hard one to make, and we were at a time when we knew different visions were happening in the band," Willett said. "We probably knew that a couple of guys that did leave (band members Jonnie Russell and Matt Aveiro left the group in 2012 and 2013, respectively) were going to leave at a certain point; it just wasn’t working too well. When all those things come back to you – after you spent a huge chunk of time and money and personal life invested in it – you go, ‘Oh …’."

Even with the trials and tribulations involved with the making of "Mine Is Yours" and the ensuing reactions, Willett regrets nothing with the album.

"Anytime you play with what comes naturally versus forcing a direction, there’s always a risk involved," he noted. "I think if you never do anything that makes you uncomfortable, then that’s pretty boring. I definitely wouldn’t do anything different."

Willett also gives the record some of the credit for the path Cold War Kids is currently on now. Now working in its own studio in San Pedro, the band has left behind the usual touring-record release cycle. The time involved with that system involves a lot of waiting, which Willett and Cold War Kids are trying to avoid.

"A lot of bands hit that point where you’re waiting for your record to come out or you’re waiting for your label to give you money or you’re waiting on something," Willett said. "Every time I’ve seen that, it’s never a good thing."

Less waiting also means less time spent stuck in one’s own head, thinking and overthinking certain choices, talking to the media about why certain choices were made and cycling back around to thinking and overthinking the music.  

So far, this new course adjustment has been a success for Cold War Kids. Their past two albums – 2013’s "Dear Miss Lonelyhearts" and last year’s "Hold My Home," recorded almost back to back – have been pleasantly accepted as both return to form and something new for many fans and critics. For instance, "All This Could Be Yours," the opener off of "Hold My Home," features the piano clanging, almost ragged spirit of the band’s earlier, breakthrough records. At the same time, there’s still a chunk of the group’s sound that’s still new and evolving.

"I think very rarely somebody would say, ‘This is an amazing song, but it’s not who you are, so I’m not going to like it,’" Willett said. "At the end of the day, it’s do the people like the songs and do they connect with them. There is a greater story when you’re a band with a name and a style. It’s important that you connect the dots there, but for us, I think the song ‘First’ was kind of a flirtation with a more immediate kind of pop song. And we’ll probably try to do more of that and see where that takes us."

"It’s always hard to move forward and keep it interesting and also evolve. I think we’re still learning, still learning what it is that we do best."