We observe that some self-similar measures defined by finite or infinite iterated function systems with overlaps satisfy certain "bounded measure type condition", which allows us to extract useful measure-theoretic properties of iterates of the measure. We develop a technique to obtain a closed formula for the spectral dimension of the Laplacian defined by self-similar measure satisfying this condition. For Laplacians defined by fractal measures with overlaps, spectral dimension has been obtained earlier only for a small class of one-dimensional self-similar measures satisfying Strichartz second-order self-similar identities. The main technique we use relies on the vector-valued renewal theorem proved by Lau, Wang and Chu.