With its debut album, "How to Save a Life," The Fray has taken flight on radio and online. The CD has gone gold and is No. 5 on iTunes, and the band's single "Over My Head (Cable Car)" holds the No. 7 and No. 5 spots on the mainstream and adult Top 40 airplay charts, respectively. Another single, the title track from "Life," has been featured on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and in HBO's Summer Image campaign.

The earnest, yearning songs, which have garnered comparisons to British bands such as Coldplay, also are a hit on MySpace, where the group ranks No. 2 among major-label artists. Sales for its tour have averaged an impressive 97 percent, according to Billboard Boxscore.

The Fray, originally from Denver, was formed in 2002 by singer/pianist Isaac Slade and guitarist/singer Joe King, who are the principal songwriters. Drummer Ben Wysocki and guitarist Dave Welsh joined a year later. Slade, 25, "wasn't allowed to listen to secular music" as a child. "My parents wanted me to listen to Christian music, and I wanted pop, so we settled on jazz as a happy medium. Then my parents started easing up a bit, and we got into Counting Crows and Better Than Ezra."

Faith continues to be an important factor for members of The Fray, who "grew up middle-of-the-road Protestant," Slade says. But "we don't call ourselves a Christian band. ... When you get into marketing, 'Christian' means that you have everything together, and you're always happy, and you want everybody to start going to your church. The common denominators in the music I've liked is the honesty of not having answers and the passion to find them. ... If we have an agenda, it's to make art that is honest and represents what we believe in."

The song "How to Save a Life" was influenced by Slade's experience working at a camp for troubled teens. "One of the kids I was paired up with was a musician. Here I was, a protected suburbanite, and he was just 17 and had all these problems. And no one could write a manual on how to save him. ... I got a lot of e-mail about it. One kid died in a car accident, and I guess it had been the last song he downloaded from his computer. They played it at his funeral, and some of his friends got 'Save a life' tattooed on their arms. The response has been overwhelming."

"We're all shocked that this band made it," Slade says. "We're writing like crazy. We know that a lot of bands disappear after the first record."

When asked about the future, Slade dryly offers backup plans: "Dave will be running several successful restaurants; he's an amazing chef and writes restaurant reviews for our Web site. Joe is an amazing businessman, so he'll operate a number of retail outlet chains, probably own a hedge fund or something. I would love to get into film. I have a production company and we've made a couple of shorts; and we're working on a feature. And Ben — he has the musician's curse. He wants nothing more than to be a drummer for the rest of his life. Maybe he'll do little tours with us if we're still going."