Spearin's debut solo album, The Happiness Project, was released on February 14, 2009, on the Arts & Crafts label.

The concept for The Happiness Project, making music out of ordinary speech, is influenced by his early life with a blind father and his own Buddhist studies.

The album, titled just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, is a series of classical improvisations, featuring Runsteen on violin and Spearin on nyckelharpa.

Spearin and Runsteen recorded this album in the Chiesa di San Vigilio, near Castel Campo, which experienced two waves of the Black Death that killed ninety percent of the local villagers.

The title of the album is inspired by the interior walls of the chapel, which are covered in medieval graffiti pleading with God to rescue victims from the horrors of the disease.