That doesn't sound like Sleater-Kinney

Surviving 10 years is a difficult feat for any band, even with major label support and moneymaking greatest hits collections. But for alt-rock bands that emerged from the riot grrrl movement of the early '90s, the task seems almost impossible. Unless, of course, you're Sleater-Kinney.

Named ''America's Best Rock Band" by Time magazine in 2001, the Northwest trio had matured from its obscure Olympia, Wash., roots to become a striking presence in independent rock. With critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base, the all-female band seemed to have nailed its approach.

As their career neared the decade mark, however, the members of Sleater-Kinney decided to abandon the principles that got them that far. For their latest album, ''The Woods," they exchanged the sometimes choppy, melodic pieces that defined their catalog for winding guitar solos, expansive breakdowns, and lots of distortion.

''We're not going to just be what everybody thinks we're going to be," said drummer Janet Weiss. ''We couldn't have beared it if we felt like the band was losing its vitality." The band plays Avalon on Wednesday.

After hitting the road behind its 2002 release ''One Beat," Sleater-Kinney took its first step in a new direction by embarking on an arena tour with Pearl Jam the following year. In contrast to the small clubs and like-minded progressive crowds the band was used to, the large venues and eclectic turnouts for Pearl Jam forced Weiss, along with guitarist Carrie Brownstein and vocalist/guitarist Corin Tucker, to concentrate on one another, she said. That focus allowed the group to improvise more, breaking into segues between songs that sometimes lasted five or six minutes.

Meanwhile, their music was filling much larger locales, allowing them to hear a new potential direction to take.

''I think hearing our songs sort of floating around in this huge space, this giant space, we started to hear things in a different way," Weiss said. ''I think it was in those [improvised segues] that we started to mine this new territory and started to kind of relax and sit in our music a little bit more comfortably and allow the notes to ring out and allow ourselves to be heard in more of a grand, heavy fashion."

It was a freedom and a heaviness that began to permeate the band's songwriting process as it worked on the material that would become ''The Woods."

While writing the album, Sleater-Kinney also began what Weiss described as the ''uneasy process" of looking for a new label. With four LPs released on Kill Rock Stars, Brownstein, Tucker, and Weiss decided to split amicably from the label. After spending one year on its own, Sleater-Kinney was approached by Sub Pop Records, home of the Postal Service and the Shins, and was convinced to give the label a chance.

With an itch to create something great, the band began the difficult task of whittling down the material it had been working on for the new album. Though there were some pieces that had been worked on for months, Weiss said the group had to be more discerning to get the best result.

''The place where feelings get hurt is in practice when a part that someone's really been busting it for, for whatever reason, gets thrown away," she said. ''There are so many reasons why material gets axed. I think it's one of the saving graces of this band that we're gutsy enough to throw things away, because otherwise we'd have a lot of really mediocre records."

There was still one final hurdle for the women of Sleater-Kinney in their journey to ''The Woods." For the first time, they decided to record outside of the Northwest. They took off for a small town in western New York.

''It's very rural and incredibly snowy and we really were holed up away from any family, friends, comforts of home -- all those things were very, very far from us," Weiss said. ''We were in this isolated, slightly uncomfortable environment, forcing us to really delve into the work."

The group also left longtime producer John Goodmanson to work with Mercury Rev producer David Fridmann, who Weiss said added his own touch to the record.

''We wanted a collaborator. We wanted someone to take the reins and deliver us into a whole new zone," Weiss said.

In the end, they got just what they wanted.

''I just want people to be surprised by it," Weiss said. ''I want people to put that first song on and be like, 'Whoa, this is Sleater-Kinney? I didn't know that they could sound like this; this is wild.' I hope it can rattle someone a little bit, maybe make them walk over to the speakers and rewind something and play it again."