Paste Premiere: The Weepies' "I Was Made for Sunny Days"

The Weepies’ most recent collection of effervescent folk-pop songs were cheerful enough to prompt Paste to get some tips from the husband and wife duo about how to live a happy life. If the sound of “I Was Made for Sunny Days,” the lead single from their forthcoming Be My Thrill is any indication, Deb Talan and Steve Tannen have been following their own advice and keeping it upbeat.

Opting out of a tour for their 2008 album, Hideaway, to raise their infant son gave The Weepies plenty of time to write new material. “We wrote something like 70 tunes, and were able to experiment quite a bit before these 14 songs emerged as the record,” Tannen says.

Once they pared their surplus of new tracks down to album length, Tannen and Talan called up old friends, drummer Frank Lenz, guitarist Meg Toohey and string player Oliver Kraus to flesh out the sound. This record also finds them adding bassists Tony Levin and Larry Klein to the mix. You can hear “I Was Made for Sunny Days,” the first single from The Weepies’ new batch of tunes on the Paste Station before its release, this Tuesday, May 18. Be My Thrill will be released by Nettwerk on Aug. 31. Fans who want a sneak peek at the duo’s new material can catch them at Lilith Fair stops in San Diego (July 7) or Los Angeles (July 10).

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