Say this five times fast: Lit has a hit. If you think that's a fun little ditty, imagine how it sounds to the four members of the Anaheim, Calif. rock collective, who have worked for nine years to earn their overnight success.

Lit developed their radio monster, "My Own Worst Enemy," the same way as the rest of their tunes--by loving it a lot. "Our jam sessions go through the 'Lit machine' and everyone puts in their two cents," explains singer A.Jay Popoff. "Within two minutes, we know if it's going to be a song. If everyone's not into it right away, we get rid of it. We're not one of those bands that writes 30 songs for a 12-song album."

If Lit really did stick to that methodology for their new disc, A Place In The Sun (RCA), then they've got fine instincts indeed; there's nary a clunker among the album's 12 tunes. Throughout, the band takes a serious approach to fun songs that hang on gritty, bright hooks, resulting in automatic singalongs.

When A.Jay, his guitarist brother Jeremy Popoff, bassist Kevin Baldes, and drummer Allen Shellenberger came together back at the beginning of the decade, they were part of a rich Orange County music scene that would play third fiddle to Seattle for years. But Lit knew it was only a matter of time before their corner of California got its fair share of recognition.

"What's cool is that there's so many kinds of bands from Orange County: Social Distortion, the Offspring, Korn, No Doubt," A.Jay says. "A lot of the bands that have been around for the last nine or 10 years are surfacing now. It seems like there's a huge Orange County scene, but there's not really a lot of clubs to play. There's not a huge nightlife."

To compensate for the lack of venues, Lit made sure that the shows they did put on at places like Fullerton's Club 369 were sold-out bonanzas with big-show ambition. With A.Jay's strong, soaring vocals kicking out lyrics that bore a subtle sense of trickery, plus Jeremy's big, insistent guitar buzz and the rhythm section's firm backdrop, Lit's songs had a way of sticking in the heads of their fellow Californians.

But the formula also works on a national scale, a fact that the band had to absorb all too quickly late last December. That's when radio power KROQ put "My Own Worst Enemy" into heavy rotation a month before the album was even out. Naturally, their record company freaked and rush-released A Place In The Sun, catapulting the patient men of Lit into rock stardom face-first.

"It definitely happened a lot quicker than expected," A.Jay says of the record's success. "We're getting worked pretty hard, playing almost every night and not sleeping a lot. But we're definitely not complaining."

-David Weiss @ LAUNCH.COM