Talk about your rocket rides out of obscurity. In just three years, the members of L.A.'s Lifehouse went from playing weekly gigs in a high-school auditorium to opening for Pearl Jam and Matchbox Twenty and having a #1 hit on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. But to hear 20-year-old lead singer/guitarist Jason Wade tell it, there have been some humbling speed bumps along the road to rock stardom.

Like how they never actually got to hang with Pearl Jam while the bands were touring together, for example. And then there was Lifehouse's "Monkees"-like reaction to hearing their hit single, "Hanging By a Moment," on the radio for the first time. "We stopped and did the whole movie thing where you run around the car and get all excited," Wade explained.

The band, which also features bassist Sergio Andrade, drummer Rick Woolstenhulme and touring guitarist Stuart Mathis, got together four years ago as teenagers. Their debut, No Name Face, was released in October; the initial single, "Hanging By a Moment," mixes the urgency of grunge with a pop sensibility, courtesy of Wade's love of bands ranging from Simon & Garfunkel to Nirvana.

A black belt in karate, Wade spent his youth moving from city to city in the Far East, finally settling in Los Angeles at 15. He credits his itinerant life and his parents' divorce with helping him to unlock music's ability to spur self-discovery — topics he explores on the acoustic rockers "Somebody Else's Song" and "Sick Cycle Carousel." However, as he tells MTV Radio's Jeff Cornell, the meaning of those lyrics is for him to know and you to figure out.