This is the first single by American indie rock band Death Cab For Cutie, from their seventh studio album, titled Codes and Keys. The song premiered on Seattle radio station 107.7 The End on March 28, 2011.
The optimistic lyrics ("There's nothing to fear / Save the tears, save the tears") reflect frontman Ben Gibbard's happier state of mind after the gloomy, self-loathing material on Narrow Stairs. This is most likely down to his marriage to actress and musician Zooey Deschanel whom he wed in September 2009. Their union lasted just two years.
Despite being released as a lead single, the song was a late addition to the album. Death Cab bassist Nick Harmer told MTV News: "This song actually came in late during the recording process. I mean, we had a group of songs in the beginning that we were working on, and you never really know what your album's going to be at the start of a process, but we knew what songs we were going to start working on. Then [Ben] brought ['Tourist'] in later on in the process, and the fact that it went from being a song that we hadn't gone into the process knowing about ... to suddenly becoming a song that we immediately reacted to, that as soon as we recorded it, we just knew it was going to be the first song to release from this album. That was a fun development for us."
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