The Fray Hatching Plans For New Music

It's sophomore album is out barely five months, but the Fray is already hatching plans for its follow-up -- and may even come out with an EP before that.

Drummer Ben Wysocki tells Billboard.com that the latter is "only a rumor so far" but acknowledges that the Denver quartet has been talking about it. "There's some scraps left over from the studio," he says. "There's also already quite a handful of (new) stuff that we have, that we've started on the road and in our own little home studios. So we might take a week some time on this tour and hide away in a studio somewhere and hash those out just to see what happens.

"I think it's important to, instead of just shifting your gears totally -- now we're in studio mode, now we're in touring mode -- if you kind of stay in this and figure out how to stay in the middle of this equilibrium that we're people who create music and then perform it, you're better off creatively. We just love making music, and we love touring as well, but it's a balance."

Wysocki says the group started thinking about its third album "before we finished this one" -- "The Fray," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 after its early February release and has been certified gold, with a second single "Never Say Never," climbing the charts. He says that there's "a pile of stuff already brewing," as well as a resolve to take things stylistically further afield the next time out.

"We're pretty excited," Wysocki says. "I think we are moving in some pretty exciting directions, and I think we're gonna push ourselves this next time to enter some possibly scary creative territory and maybe get some different people involved and just stretch ourselves and see what happens."

The Fray probably won't get to work on the next album in earnest until late 2010, however. The group is planning a long tour to promote "The Fray;" its current North American tour runs through Aug. 7 in Spokane, Wash., and overseas dates are expected to be announced soon for later in the year.