“Santa Barbara,” the title of Toronto group After Funk’s third release and first full-length album, holds special significance for the band’s members.

And it has nothing to do with California. In fact, the band’s tour — which stops at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Wednesday — is only its second visit to the West Coast, following a jaunt last year that included its Oregon debut in Portland.

“We lived in a house on Santa Barbara Road; it’s not California,” drummer Jaime Rosenberg said from home in Toronto, Canada, the day before the tour. “I kind of like that a lot of people go right to California, but it really has nothing to do with it. … Even people here, most people go straight to California.”

That house in Toronto served as headquarters for the four-piece — Rosenberg, vocalist/keyboardist Yanick Allwood, guitarist Phil Tessis and bassist Jackson Steinwall — while writing “Santa Barbara,” the band’s first collection of new music since 2015’s “’Til the Sun Comes Up.”

Fans can catch glimpses of the house in the video for single “A-Town,” a slinky funk-meets-hip-hop groove featuring a guest verse from rapper Stacey Kay, who has worked with CeeLo Green. The clip keeps with the often elaborate setups and humor of the band’s previous music videos, including the pool-party vibes of 2015’s “Elephant Man.”

“Phil, our guitar player, does a great job at that; he, a lot of the time, is really involved with coming up with the story and the plot,” Rosenberg said. “… That (video for ‘A-Town’) was kind of like a reverse ‘Weird Science.’ Instead of these nerds engineering these girls, it was these nerdy girls create the perfect band.”

This sense of humor points to the laid-back manner in which After Funk formed. Allwood, Tessis, Rosenberg and original bassist Justin Bontje met as students at the University of Western Ontario in the early 2010s, but didn’t get “really serious about it” until 2014, when the group played the Electric Forest Festival in Michigan.

“I don’t think any of us really anticipated this being a full-time thing or something that we even pursued much, and then things started falling into place,” Rosenberg said. “We were playing regionally. I guess we have roots in three different cities, too, so that helped us in Hamilton, London and Toronto (all in Ontario). So we were able to start building regionally right off the bat.”

However, the band’s members have always taken the music and the playing seriously. Though now best known for his soulful belting, Allwood studied classical music at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, as did Steinwall, while Rosenberg and Tessis studied jazz at Humber College in Toronto.

“It helped us all get to a level of playing that we feel good about, and it exposes you to a lot of different people and players and different kinds of music,” Rosenberg said.

At one point, membership ballooned to eight members, including a full horn section, before dropping back down to the core four in the band today.

“It’s kind of all you need,” Rosenberg said. “The vibe was better. We’re all like a family, so we’re all in it for the long haul, and we love doing it. Sometimes with horn players, they float around a lot, so if you don’t (make) your first call on time, then you’re getting a sub or something and parts suffer. It just feels better as the core. I think also musically it allowed us as a rhythm section to really tighten up.”

The band’s self-titled, 2014 debut was mixed and mastered by Soulive drummer Alan Evans. Since then, it has shared stages with funk-rock and jam outfits such as Snarky Puppy and Lettuce.

“Santa Barbara” features more collaborations in the performing and songwriting departments. Songwriters Yoko Gold, Rupert Gayle and Jeff Hazin (who also produced the record) contributed lyrics, while players included trumpeter Tom Moffett and saxophonist Rob Christian, among others.

“Usually Yanick or sometimes Phil will bring in an idea or a couple of parts that they feel go together,” Rosenberg said of the songwriting process. “From there we just workshop it and we try different things: maybe change the groove and see how that feels, or people will interpret it a different way and bring in a part. … On this last album we actually had some guest writers helping mainly with lyrics and stuff too. So that was a new thing, but I think it’s cool to have someone who’s a good and experienced lyricist contributing their ideas as well.”

The album dropped in February, but After Funk is making sure there isn’t another multiyear gap between releases. Rosenberg teased an upcoming single featuring Toronto rapper and singer Terrell Morris.

“That’s a big goal for us: just keep fresh, keep releasing music constantly instead of letting it sit for years like we did before,” Rosenberg said.