Let M be a smooth compact oriented Riemannian manifold of dimension n without boundary, and let be the Laplace-Beltrami operator on M. Say 0 = f ∈ S(R + ), and that f (0) = 0. For t > 0, let K t (x, y) denote the kernel of f (t 2 ). Suppose f satisfies Daubechies' criterion, and b > 0. For each j, write M as a disjoint union of measurable sets E j,k with diameter at most ba j , and measure comparable toform a frame for (I − P)L 2 (M), for b sufficiently small (here P is the projection onto the constant functions). Moreover, we show that the ratio of the frame bounds approaches 1 nearly quadratically as the dilation parameter approaches 1, so that the frame quickly becomes nearly tight (for b sufficiently small). Moreover, based upon how well-localized a function F ∈ (I − P)L 2 is in space and in frequency, we can describe which terms in the summation F ∼ S F = j k F, φ j,k φ j,k are so small that they can be neglected. If n = 2 and M is the torus or the sphere, and f (s) = se −s (the "Mexican hat" situation), we obtain two explicit approximate formulas for the φ j,k , one to be used when t is large, and one to be used when t is small.