Melancholy band The Fray [ tickets ] doesn't exactly look like a team of crime fighters, but a pair of would-be Tempe, AZ, thieves recently learned a thing or two about the Colorado-based group's skills in that department.

According to published reports, the band got stuck in traffic around 12:30 a.m. April 1--after playing a local festival--and saw two men pull a 42-inch, plasma flat-screen TV out of bushes. The Grammy-nominated musicians thought that looked a little fishy, so they called 911.

"Well, we do what we can," guitarist Dave Welsh said with a laugh during a recent interview with LiveDaily. "Little did they know they were being busted by The Fray.."

When The Fray--which also includes singer/pianist Isaac Slade, guitarist/vocalist Joe King and drummer Ben Wysocki--isn't helping to solve crimes, these days it is pushing its album "How to Save a Life." This summer the band will hit theaters and summer sheds.

Before heading out on the group's recently launched tour, Welsh talked with LiveDaily about performing The Fray's music in 20,000-capacity amphitheaters, what the members did on their spring break, and the the lead actor in the video for "Over My Head (Cable Car)."

LiveDaily: Do you still live in Colorado?

Dave Welsh: Yeah, we all live in Colorado still.

You're playing a summer tour of amphitheaters and theaters. Your music is very intimate. How do you plan on keeping that intimate sound, yet entertaining fans?

I think you asked the question we were all asking ourselves for the last three months, because it's been somewhat daunting to think about such a big tour. It's probably literally twice as big as anything we've ever done. We've kind of assembled a little team to try and figure out what exactly that means. We've enlisted the help of our friends, who are fairly artsy, to help us kind of create as much of an intimate feel in an amphitheater as we can. I think we all realize that our music isn't, for the most part, grandiose arena rock. We're happy we're not that band. But playing to 20,000 is a very different thing when your music doesn't lend itself to that, necessarily. But we're actually in the process of [planning the show] right now. We've had a couple of long conference calls with a guy who's actually in Belgrade right now who's a good friend of ours, but who is unfortunately two oceans away. It's a process.

In Phoenix, you're playing a 5,000-seat theater. That seems like a perfect venue for you.

Even in this big summer tour, there are some smaller venues. We're doing a couple nights at the Greek [Theatre] in L.A. I feel kind of awkward saying this, but it's a taste of what it was like for us, even though it's what it was like three months ago.

When you wrote "How to Save a Life," did you expect it to be a hit?

No. I don't think so at all. This question has come up a lot. I think it's actually made us evaluate whether or not we ever felt that way. I don't think we ever did. That's not to say that we weren't ambitious and we weren't writing songs hopefully to make it. The song originated in a basement of somebody's house and then was formed by a band in a barn, which is actually where we practiced for a long time. It takes a certain kind of person to imagine, "That song I'm going to write is going to be a smash hit." I don't know if I want to be associated with those types of people. I generally think they think too largely of themselves sometimes. ["How to Save a Life"] started as a song that was deeply personal. The magic of it was, even though it was personal to us, it somehow became personal to a lot of people. I guess that's how it happened.

Your success, thanks to airplay on "Grey's Anatomy," has shown that there are other media by which music can be pushed besides radio and MTV.

I think that's something we've had to learn along the way, too. We might be at the tail end of the generation that thought that couldn't happen. But the generation that is our fans--as a general rule our fans are younger than us--they are people that are accepting of this--all the Internet sites and the multimedia exposure. Ten years ago, that would be horrible to do. Nowadays, it's really accepted, if not kind of a cool thing. It's funny how fickle and sometimes interesting the public changes their perceptions of things--what is cool, and then isn't cool anymore, and then all of a sudden is cool. Like, TV's cool again--weird. Being a band on TV is cool. I hardly think that Green Day, 10 years ago, would have done a TV spot. Nowadays, it's like, who wouldn't? It's weird to see the evolution of it.

There's one commercial that has the Pussycat Dolls and some kids moshing to a Korn song. I don't think Korn would have licensed its material 10 years ago.

[Laughs] Exactly. Hey, it's what the kids want these days, so we give it to them.

Have you started writing new material yet?

We have, but it's a slow process. Our schedule has been fairly busy over the past month. Last year was even busier than this year. We've tried to find times to write, but most of the time it's just trying to keep up with the lives we're leading at the moment. I think this summer we'll be able to hash out a couple more songs. This is our last big chance to give audiences in the states any sort of carrot for them to hold on to until the next album. We won't be touring the states until the next album is out. I think it would be disappointing for fans to come to our last show and hear the same songs they heard for two years. It's definitely a priority of ours. It's just hard to find time for it.

Does Isaac Slade's brother really star in the video for "Over My Head (Cable Car)"?

Yeah, his younger brother. He has two brothers. The brother right below him is the one he wrote the song about. The brother below that is the one who was in the video. It's slightly inbred, but it worked.

Hey, and he was probably pretty cheap.

All I think he wanted was $150 and a PSP. He definitely played the videogame card.

Do you do any covers live?

We have done them in the past. I think they've been mostly good. We've been somewhat ambitious, and really only covered Beatles songs. I think we're realizing that's kind of sacred ground. It's a really hard thing to do and have people appreciate it. If there's any band you don't want to touch, it's them. For the summer, we're putting our minds together and thinking of a song that has a lot of energy for people that they'll be able to sing along to. As much as you like to do fun, obscure covers that nobody knows and half of the people think maybe it's your song, it's much more pleasing for an audience to have a song that they know and sing along to and to kind of pump them up for whatever is to come after that.