It’s been nearly a decade since the Nadas first began in the hallway of Iowa State’s Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. And relentless touring and recording has made them Ames’ most successful band, selling more than 50,000 albums on their own Authentic Records label and filling clubs from one coast to the other.

The Nadas are returning yet again with “Transceiver,” an album that stemmed from the band’s past recording regimes and found the guys in Dallas recording with Deep Blue Something’s Todd and Toby Pipes and having tracks mixed by Stuart Sike, who has worked with the White Stripes.

To kick off a new tour and celebrate the release of the new record, the band is throwing an album release party at Des Moines’ Hoyt Sherman Auditorium Friday.

“It’s pretty much the biggest show we’ve ever played in Des Moines,” says singer/guitarist Jason Walsmith.

But the process of writing, recording and touring is nothing new for this long-time, Ames-rooted band. The Nadas’ sound began with Walsmith and co-singer/guitarist Mike Butterworth messing around at their fraternity house in the fall of 1993.

Ten years, six albums, endless touring, a drummer change and a bassist change later, the Nadas have re-fueled (which includes a rock star-esque tour bus) and re-tooled their sound with their sights set a bit higher.

Walsmith said the addition of bassist Jon Locker spurred the band to continue touring and recording.

“We’re more focused, more driven, more motivated than we ever have been before,” he says. “It was looking kind of sketchy for a while. [Locker] brought everybody back into the game.”

Locker joined the Nadas more than a year ago after former bassist Brett Nelson parted ways with the band. After filling in for Nelson at a show, Locker made the connection that eventually got him the position in the band.

“We were looking for bass players all over,” Walsmith says. “We were talking to bass players in Minneapolis, bass players in Los Angeles … Trying to figure out who to replace [Nelson] with. It was good timing.”

Along with the new bass player comes the group’s new album, “Transceiver,” released Tuesday to the recently reformatted Web site (www.thenadas.com) and live Nadas shows with negotiations for national distribution.

“Transceiver” is the band’s sixth release, the fourth from the studio. It has been two years since the Nadas released an album, 2001’s live “Show to Go,” and three since 2000’s studio release, “Coming Home.”

Walsmith and Locker agreed that “Transceiver” is the band’s most mature release to date. The band tapped the Pipes brothers, one-time one-hit-wonder musicians turned praised producers, to help The Nadas come up with “studio versions of live music.”

“I think [the Pipes brothers] said they wanted it to ‘drip with integrity,'” Walsmith says.

“It is the most ‘integritigized’ [album],” Locker enunciates.

“How do you spell that?” Walsmith asks him.

“With a ‘g’ and, uh, a ‘z,’ ” Locker replies.

The record’s title and theme stemmed from happenings in the studio while recording. ISU alumnus Corey Moss, who did artist and repertoire work for the album, says the band was using vintage amplifiers, which began to pick up CB radio chatter (which can be heard on the album).

Locker says the band then wanted to name the album “Citizen’s Band”— but changed it after learning of another band’s album of the same name.

Locker, who not only added fresh bass playing, also had some fresh album-naming ideas as well.

“I was talking to my dad, who is a ham radio operator, and he was talking about the transceiver,” Locker says. “It sends and receives, and it’s a much cooler word than transmit.”

“Transceiver” stuck.

The lyrics on the album were written by Walsmith and Butterworth. Both say the words are the last piece of the puzzle when writing a song.

“I’ll sit down and strum different chord progressions,” Butterworth says. “And the rest comes later.”

“I’d just have these little seeds of little things I’d play,” Walsmith adds.

“I’d also have these little seeds of words … Eventually, they find each other.”

One of the tracks on “Transceiver” was co-written by Walsmith and Butterworth, but most tracks were one-man jobs.

“We usually write a song all on our own and bring it to the band and have them add their flavor,” Butterworth says.

“Most of the songs, we knew exactly what we wanted from them,” Walsmith says. “Some of the songs I had only played myself — the other guys had never heard them. So it was kind of like a blank canvas. But really we just played our parts.

“That’s what’s different about this record — it’s just true and raw.”

Who: The Nadas with Marty Lloyd

When: 9 p.m. Friday

Where: Hoyt Sherman Place 1501 Woodland Ave., Des Moines

Tickets: Available at www.hoytsherman.org: $15 in advance, $17.50 day of show

— Kyle Moss contributed to this article.