It's a sunny March afternoon and Isaac Slade, frontman for Denver's piano-pop newcomers the Fray, is taking a break from the band's photo shoot at a hilltop mansion in Los Angeles. After all, with years of touring Colorado indie dives under their belts, the Fray are finally riding high on a Number One alternative single and a debut, How to Save a Life, that's sold over 100,000 copies.

"The photo shoot's glorious," Slade admits. "It's probably, like, a 16,000-square-foot...