For those who grew up alongside Disney stars of the aughts, the opening notes and light scatting of the "Potential Breakup Song" intro evoke an almost Pavlovian response: Stop what you're doing, it's time to rock. Nearly 15 years after its release, the pop-rock single remains the biggest hit from sisters Aly and AJ Michalka, who perform together as Aly & AJ and witnessed the track's resurgence on TikTok last year. In late December, they dropped a reimagined explicit version.

The resurgence was timely, given that Aly, now 32, and AJ, 30, would just months later put out their first studio album since 2007′s "Insomniatic" (which houses "Potential Breakup Song" and followed their successful 2005 debut, "Into the Rush"). The new record — whimsically titled "A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun" — goes for a different vibe; it's a bit more laid-back than both the guitar-driven music they released as teenagers on Disney's label and the synth-pop of the two EPs they released in the intervening years.

Q: If I had a car, this is what I would be playing all summer while driving. It's chill. It flows. Tell me about the sound you were going for.

ALY: When we got into the studio with Yves (Rothman), our producer, it was very much a goal of ours to make a record that felt timeless and classic, and that it was very much rooted in Americana music. Of course there's songs like "Symptom of Your Touch" and "Paradise" that are a little more pop, but ultimately we wanted to just create an album that didn't feel like any specific genre necessarily, that just felt like good songwriting. We didn't involve a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

Q: Are there any songs on the record that really capture the emotion of what you're looking to put out at this stage in your careers?

ALY: "Pretty Places" and "Don't Need Nothing." Those songs are very much the heart and soul of the record. It has to do with the subject matters, the fact that "Pretty Places" is an ode to the open road, saying yes to adventure, not being afraid of change. And then "Don't Need Nothing," which I love so much not only from a lyrical standpoint but a melodic standpoint. It's a reminder that we don't need all these physical objects we cling onto. It's more about an experience we're missing.

Q: Aly, you mentioned something earlier about not having too many cooks in the kitchen. Some of your earliest reviews pointed out how authentic the music felt, especially for teenagers. It felt like you were really guiding the writing process. Tell me about being in control of your music.

ALY: We have always been those kids. We've been very outspoken about our music from an early age, and we got lucky being paired up with the two producers we worked on with "Into the Rush," who were very nurturing to us as young artists. They were like what our age is now, making the record with us as 15-year-olds, which is really funny.

AJ: Yes. Oh my god, that's so weird.

ALY: Even with "Insomniatic," it was mainly all written and produced with another set of producers, who were a couple. Sticking with one producer for a whole record just feels right for us. It's very much a pop genre thing to have a bunch of producers in and out on different tracks over a whole album, but I find it so strange because it's almost like directing a movie with six different directors. The story line can get kind of blurred. It's funny because the one record that never came out under Hollywood Records was actually made with a bunch of different producers.

Q: There are a lot of ideas floating out there about what it would have been like to make music as part of the Disney scene. What was that like for you two?

ALY: We happened to be artists on a label who were writing our own music, and there weren't a lot of artists who were at that time. Miley (Cyrus) and Demi (Lovato), they had kind of come in right after us and I know they write their own stuff or at least collaborate with people. But we were kind of our own thing. We were a bit of an anomaly over there. And I think that's why our time there was hard, because we were women, writing music, very young, asking to collaborate with people outside of our genre. The label was confused and taken aback by our brazen ambition. We had a lot of difficult conversations with them over the years and ultimately our partnership had to end because we just weren't on the same page. But we're very grateful for the launching pad they did give us.

People don't want to see their childhood idol grow up, and that can be really hard to navigate. Because you do want to grow up and you do want to spread your wings, but you're trying not to do it too fast. Aje (AJ) and I were able to do that a little bit more in the privacy of our own homes, and it wasn't quite as exploited as it was for others. I'm grateful for that.

Q: Tell me a little bit about the growing pains there. For me, what came to mind upon hearing the explicit version of "Potential Breakup Song" was that you probably couldn't have written it that way because of your audience at the time.

ALY: We never even played with the idea of having those lyrics in there because we knew that would have been completely killed. There were times, especially on the "Insomniatic" record, where we had a lot of censoring happen, which was very upsetting for us. When I look back on it, I'm like, "I can't believe that's what they thought that meant, or that they were censoring that." It really was a bunch of men censoring young women, and when you look back on that era you're like, "Wow, that was really problematic." And I'm sure it's still happening today, in different ways.

Q: What went into the decision to enter the industry together as a single act? That was one you guys made pretty early on.

AJ: We're a very tightknit small family, only two siblings. We've done everything together since we were kids and just knew at an early age that we wanted to entertain, and we wanted to do it together. We didn't know this would ever lead to something professional. Our music really started when we picked up the guitar and piano, and that's when we started writing songs. I can't really see us ever having a solo career or working on something alone. We're very much in this together. And there's something really special about that, sharing this with someone who gets it.

Q: Looking back, do you have any thoughts on how the Disney scene has changed over time? I'm thinking about Olivia Rodrigo, for example. What she's doing now is so different than what Disney stars could do in the past. I honestly didn't even realize Radio Disney shut down last month. It just feels like a completely different landscape for the kids coming up now.

ALY: It's changed in a huge way. I think social media has changed it more than anything.

AJ: One hundred percent. Aly and I were talking about this recently. It was so uncool to be Disney back then. Even though it launched a ton of careers, you weren't getting played on major radio —

ALY: You were not on a major magazine.

AJ: Yeah, you would never be on the cover of a cool magazine. You wouldn't get an SNL performance or an NPR Tiny Desk or whatever it is. And now, if you blow up on social media and you happen to be connected to the Disney machine, it doesn't really matter if Disney is involved. You're probably going to get those cool opportunities.

It seems to still be connected to Aly and I — not in a negative way, but we still have this Disney persona that isn't always looked at as cool because we came out in the early 2000s. There's a world where we're trying to shed that, and it just has to happen naturally. You can't force that.

Aly acted in film shot in southeastern Connecticut

Aly Michalka starred in the Hallmark movie "Sand Dollar Cove" that recently filmed in Noank and Stonington.

It's scheduled to premiere June 26 as part of Hallmark's "Summer Nights."

Hallmark describes the plot, pulled from Nancy Naigle's 2015 novel, this way: "Real estate development project manager Elli (Michalka) is sent by her company to the quaint, seaside Connecticut town of Sand Dollar Cove to acquire the beachfront property they’ve chosen as the site of their new resort. Brody (Murray), the charming local who holds the deed, wants to make sure the town’s beloved pier — where many memories have been made over the years — remains intact. Elli and Brody spend time together while she tries to figure out a way to make the deal work and the undeniable connection between them grows."