Ludo [ tickets ] guitarist Tim Ferrell believes in his band's ability to produce humor-laced alterna-pop songs--which is why, when the St. Louis, MO-based act wrote the dramatic "Love Me Dead," he had a feeling that the song could be a hit.

"We believed that if the song has a shot, if radio played it, people were going to respond to it," Ferrell said during a recent phone interview. "But nowadays, with the way it all works, it's tough. We've been really fortunate that people gave it a shot and people are reacting to it."

Fox Television even gave "Love Me Dead" a chance, placing the song in the background of trailers for the "House" season premiere.

"We watched the promos on YouTube," Ferrell said. "I've never seen it come on television. I get phone calls and texts whenever it airs. It's so hard to watch television because we're on the road. We didn't get to see ourselves play 'Jay Leno' or 'Jimmy Kimmel.' We're kind of used to it now."

"Love Me Dead" appears on the band's major-label debut, "You're Awful, I Love You." Matt Wallace (Maroon 5, Faith No More) produced the set for the group, whose lineup also features vocalist/guitarist Andrew Volpe, Moog/synthesizer player Tim Convy, drummer Matt Palermo and bassist Marshall Faniciullo.

"[Matt] really listened to us and helped us make the record we wanted to make, to get the songs where we wanted the songs to be," Ferrell said of Wallace's involvement. "He just provided support in all sorts of ways. It turned out to be a great experience.

"I think we benefited from him also working on all sorts of projects from Faith No More to Maroon 5 to R.E.M. to the Spin Doctors. We wanted to make a record that had lots of different stuff on it. We wanted to make a record that had fun stuff, serious stuff, heavy stuff and acoustic stuff. He was able to wear all those hats."

Ferrell said he hoped "You're Awful, I Love You" would best represent the band's current position.

"Humor is a large part of what we do," he said. "Our first record has got a lot of fun, funny, quirky pop songs. Our second album was a rock opera. It was kind of dark and over the top and, musically, way more ambitious. We wanted to get a lot of that in there, too, and try some things we hadn't done. The goal was to kind of represent all of those different aspects of our band as well as give it a live feeling too, to make sure it would work at a show if you saw it start to finish."