Le Tigre plays Sonar Lounge Dec. 11 with Lesbians on Ecstasy and Measles Mumps Rubella.

Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna is pouring all the vitriol her vocal cords can muster into the center-stage microphone at Seattle’s Showbox Theatre Nov. 21, grrl-ishly wailing the chorus to the Manhattan band’s electro-punky anti-Bush tune “Seconds.” To her left, Johanna Fateman’s getting into it, too, belting some backing “Whooaaah-ohh”s while pulling double duty on guitar and synthesizer. To her right, J.D. Samson is bouncing her diminutive frame behind a bank of samplers and keyboards, anchoring the tirade with speedy mechanical beats.

Above the trio, on a video screen, is the giant, smirking visage of Dubya. It’s about to get defiled, but not in any of the shocking, violent ways that so many other groups have indulged in this past year, or in a manner that would befit Hanna’s incensed rant. No chain saws, bullets, explosions, or quick cuts between the prez’s mug and Hitler’s—instead, his face is repeatedly scribbled out by a squiggly gray line like the Photoshop eraser tool run amok, and the electrified crowd is laughing even as they shout the biting lyrics back to the stage. It’s exasperation acted out playfully—like drawing fangs and devil horns on the yearbook photo of your sworn enemy—and it perfectly encapsulates the Le Tigre ethos: radical agitprop that you can grin and shake your bootay to.

Granted, Hanna wasn’t exactly grinning a couple of weeks earlier, as she stood on the balcony of a Best Western in the decisive red state Ohio lamenting the outcome of the election, the coverage of which she’d just been watching on the television in the hotel gym.

“I felt like I was gonna cry so I was like, ‘Ugh, I’m gonna put on Animal Planet, I’d rather see some dogs getting adopted,’” she says. “The whole thing is totally insane. But I just have to focus on the shows right now—I can’t really freak out about it or I won’t be able to do all the stuff I need to do.”

Hanna and her Le Tigre sisters are busier than ever at the moment; the current tour in support of the trio’s third album, This Island, is their biggest and most heavily promoted to date. The 13-track disc is also their best so far, with vocals often delivered, as usual, like a cheerleading squad organized by Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler, but with all that far-left politicking and feminist ideology boosted by beefier, more refined arrangements and an obviously greater command of electronic gadgetry than either 1999’s self-titled debut or 2001’s Feminist Sweepstakes displayed. You want diversity? You got it: There’s a snappy dance-punk number that calls for the indictment of Henry Kissinger (“Punker Plus”); a disco-botic hookup track that updates Blondie’s “Call Me” (“After Dark”); an industrialized anti-war head-bobber that samples Al Sharpton and Susan Sarandon (“New Kicks”); and an electropop cover of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” replete with a reggae bridge.

Some longtime fans might pine for the rawness and uniformity of Le Tigre’s earlier work, but Hanna sure doesn’t. “You know when a little kid tells the same joke over and over and over because they got attention for it the first time?” she asks. “Well, if we kept making the first record over and over again, it wouldn’t be cute anymore. It’d be kind of embarrassing. I mean, we’d be total bullshit fakers if we kept making amateur electronic music. We’ve grown so much since we started. We didn’t know what we were doing at all when we made that first record, and it shows. I think there’s something really spirited and idealistic and optimistic about it that I love, but I can’t turn back the hands of time and write that same record again, and I don’t want to.”

Of course, the money for such a punched-up new venture had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was the coffers of Strummer/Universal, which signed Le Tigre earlier this year after its own label, Mr. Lady Records, folded. Hanna says she was thrilled to have a decent recording budget for once in her 16-year career—she laughs that her old band, Olympia, Wash.’s venerable Bikini Kill, made its first album for $17 (that princely sum went toward a reel of used tape for its four-track, and, she says, if you listen to it now you can hear the faint strains of some other band playing backward on it). Still, when word leaked out that the staunchly independent trio had inked a deal with a major label, many Le Tigre followers were aghast. Even those who subscribe to the “subverting the establishment from within the corporate lair” philosophy (i.e., the Chumbawamba defense) found the move troubling.

“Look, we are the band we are, and there’s no way we’re all of a sudden gonna be Sheryl Crow, you know?” Hanna says. “That was the fear that other people had for us when they were like, ‘Ohhhh, they’re gonna sign to a major label.’ And the whole reason why we were able to sign to a major label was ’cause we feel really confident about our artistic thing as three people together, and our friendships are really solid. We wouldn’t have signed until we were at that place where we were confident in what we were doing, that we had enough experience in the studio, and that working with other people wouldn’t change who we are and what we’re doing.”

Among the producers Le Tigre turned to were former Cars leader Ric Ocasek and Nick Sansano, known for his work with Public Enemy and Sonic Youth. Both, Hanna insists, guided the band through the necessary steps of broadening its songwriting approach. “The things we wanna do, we can’t do on our own anymore,” she says. “We needed help because we’re totally self-taught. We’re just gonna keep doin’ shit exactly the same way, and how are we ever gonna fill out a bass sound if we don’t find someone to teach us how to do that? How are we gonna find other ways to structure songs if we don’t start working with other people?

“We’ve learned a lot from each other, but we’d gone as far as we could with that and we wanted to open up,” she continues. “And it was a scary process, but it was really great because we’re so used to working together and speaking our minds that it was easy to go, ‘Ehhh, I don’t really like that,’ or, ‘I do like that.’ It wasn’t like someone was gonna come in and change our sound, and all of a sudden we sound like Vanessa Carlton. Nothing against Vanessa Carlton, it’s just not my shit.”

Although Hanna certainly feels an urge to defend herself from any detractors, she says she’s less inclined these days to venture out of the bubble that includes her band mates, crew, and close friends. What a difference that is from a decade ago, when as de facto mouthpiece of the riot grrl movement she engaged heavily with legions of devotees seeking advice, support, and catharsis by sharing tales of gender discrimination and sexual abuse with their icon. Even though she was dealing with her own similar demons, plus issues with drugs and alcohol, Hanna obliged, often for hours and hours after every Bikini Kill show. That took a serious psychic toll, one that now, at age 34, she’s far more unwilling to pay.

“You know what, I don’t get paid enough to be a fuckin’ counselor and a musician and a roadie and a tour manager and a marketer,” she says. “If people wanna start paying me to do all that shit at the same time, then maybe I’ll consider it. Back then I think it was appropriate to the times. And it’s like, how would I have learned anything about people and boundaries and taking care of myself if I didn’t ever put myself out there and not take care of myself and see the results? But slowly I realized I’m gonna have a lot more to give people if I take care of myself first.

“It’s actually interesting because I feel like, when I was giving so much more of myself and supposedly was helping all these people, I actually wasn’t because I would end up resenting people,” she continues. “You’re just like, ‘God, if I have to talk to one more person I’m gonna freak out.’ Because the night before I kept talking to people when I should have taken a rest and had some alone time. So now, I mean, sometimes I do end up walking through the club at the end of the night, and there are people who want hugs, a lot of hugs, and more hugs, and stuff like that. And it’s totally nice, but I can choose when I’m up for it and when I’m not.

“Right now, on tour, my main thing is to primarily focus on the shows and giving people the best performance I can on that night,” Hanna concludes. “That’s big, and that’s enough, I think. I’m trying to have fun and, for once, enjoy it all, even despite all the horrible shit that happens in the world.”