Laid-back California rockers Cake are back — and it’s not just in those snappy new iPod nano commercials, featuring their 2001 single, “Short Skirt, Long Jacket.” Scroll down to hear “Sick of You,” the first taste of the band’s sixth studio album, Showroom of Compassion, scheduled for a Jan. 11, 2011 release.

The song is vintage Cake, with frontman John McCrea’s jaded, semi-spoken vocals, crunchy guitar riffs, a skippy beat, and blasts of trumpet. “I’m so sick of you, so sick of me, I don’t want to be with you,” McCrea sings in the hook.

“It’s about how when you hate things, the circle of hate starts rather broadly,” McCrea explains to SPIN. “You hate the President or a big movie star, someone you’ll probably never meet. Gradually though, the circle tightens and the objects of hate get closer and closer to the hater. Now it’s your uncle or your mother, now it’s your close friend, and finally it’s you. Bummer.”

What’s not a bummer: Cake’s recording process, which finds the Sacramento-born band making music in a studio powered entirely by solar energy. “We’re making our own electricity to produce our own music and videos, and no one can stop us — not a power company, not a record company, not even SPIN.com,” quips McCrea.

Listen to “Sick of You” here, and tell us whether you think it’s truly unstoppable.

LISTEN: Cake, “Sick of You”

