The acclaimed Brit roots rockers of Gomez will wrap up their Stateside promo tour in support of the band's just-released new album, "Liquid Skin," this week before hurrying home for a month-long tour of the U.K., where the LP debuted at number two on the charts.

After winning the coveted Mercury Music Prize in 1998 with its self-produced debut, "Bring It On," Gomez once again manned the boards for the follow-up sessions, which yielded a new studio album sixteen months after "Bring It On" arrived in stores.

MTV News caught up with Gomez on the eve of the U.S. release of "Liquid Skin," and the band talked about how it maintained complete artistic control for its latest, even though none of the band members are more than 23 years old.

"There was a little bit of talk about [using an outside producer]," explained guitarist-vocalist Ben Ottewell, "but I think we kind of proved [ourselves with 'Bring It On']. Basically they got the demos, and we had never made demos before, and it was like our album. I think they just saw that that was what they were signing, and if they want what they've got on those demos, then they have to let us do it ourselves."

"It's all our ideas," Ottewell continued, "and I don't think that we would last very long with a producer. Someone else in there telling us what to do, or whatever a producer does."

"And with the Mercury award," added drummer Olly Peacock, "when we claimed that, it allowed us to have even more freedom, and they were even more understanding. It was like, 'OK, you've done good so far, so just go away and carry on.'" [RealAudio]

Gomez will play the John Anson Ford Theater in Los Angeles on October 1 and finish its brief U.S. tour the following evening at the Fillmore in San Francisco.