Metric performs at The Masonic in San Francisco on March 13, 2019. Joaquin Cabello/STAFF.

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

When Metric was a new band trying to break onto the music scene in the early 2000s, the Toronto troupe needed the kind of exposure that a festival like Austin’s South by Southwest could deliver.

The quartet returned to SXSW last week, nearly one year after its fourth album, “Fantasies,” finally got them mainstream success.

“We’re really excited to be here again and catch up with a bunch of friends,” frontwoman Emily Haines said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how people have changed.”

What began 11 years ago as an electronic collaboration between Haines and guitarist James Shaw in Toronto is now a fist-pumping dance-rock band that visits Oakland’s Fox Theater on Wednesday.

Haines met Shaw in Toronto in 1997, and the two moved to New York, where they rented a loft and shared it with other musicians, some of whom would eventually start bands such as Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On the Radio. The roommate life was far from glamorous at the time, she said.

The two traveled to England several times, where they attempted start an electronic band. Growing weary of what Haines calls “sterile, formulaic pop music,” they returned to New York in 2000, as the garage band resurgence was in full swing. 

“You are affected by larger things,” she said. “None of us live in a vacuum.”

The two realized that they were spending too much time in the office trying to get the approval of record labels and not enough time performing. Bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes showed them the way.

“It really influenced us, seeing the Strokes “… have so much fun on stage,” Haines said. “That’s when we decided that was what we want.”

Meanwhile, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key, longtime friends, moved from Texas to New York and met Haines and Shaw in 2001 while practicing at their loft.

That year, the newly formed quartet completed its first full-length album, “Grow Up and Blow Away,” a collection of indie pop that put a spotlight on Haines’ crystalline voice. The garage influence was obvious in Metric’s next two albums: 2003’s “Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?” and 2005’s “Live It Out.” They showcased more of a rock edge and spawned modest hits, “Monster Hospital” and “Dead Disco.”

Haines and Shaw also performed with fellow Canadian indie pop bands Stars and Broken Social Scene (among others). Haines wrote and released a solo album, Shaw opened a recording studio, dubbed Giant, in Toronto, and Winstead and Scott-Key started a garage band on the side.

For “Fantasies,” Metric traded in some of its aggressive garage elements for a melodic, textured sound. The album was released on small record labels in Canada and Mexico and independently by the band everywhere else. Yet somehow, several songs, like “Help I’m Alive,” with a rocking kick-drum heartbeat, managed to land on radio playlists. 

“People particularly responded to ‘Help I’m Alive;’ it was really encouraging,” Haines said. “Everyone I know has always been pretty cynical about (independent artists finding success on the) radio.”

Metric has spent nearly a year on the road in support of “Fantasies” — not bad for a band without a record label. Along the way the band also released an album of six “Fantasies” songs performed acoustically.

“It’s been such an amazing ride with this record,” Haines said. “We like to say the songs escaped from the back of the studio door, and we were rushing just to keep up with them. Maybe it’s a sign of growth as a band.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.