Kip Berman is a music-geek success story. After ditching his dead-end job in a Portland call centre and moving east to New York City in 2007, he formed the Pains of Being Pure at Heart with two like-minded friends, Alex Naidus and Peggy Wang. Their first gig was as humble as it gets: a birthday party.

“We were all friends first,” says Berman on the phone. “Alex, Peggy and I would nerd out about records and go to shows, and then we started playing music.

“It wasn’t anything more than something fun to do, and that was fine because we didn’t have any expectations riding on us.”

Since then, the treble-happy, shoegaze-inspired band has shot to the top of the indie heap on the strength of their hotly tipped self-titled LP, released in February. A brand-new EP, Higher Than The Stars (Slumberland), will be available at their Horseshoe show.

“Nothing really good ever happened to the bands we draw most of our inspiration from, so we never thought people were going to like our music,” says Berman, who names obscure acts Rocketship, Dear Nora and the Exploding Hearts as influences.

While appreciative of the Pitchfork bump they received last February when their record was named “best new music” and linked to the C86 revival, Berman points to the addition of drummer Kurt Feldman as the real turning point for the band.

“Before Kurt joined, we sounded pretty boring live. Nothing against drum machines; I was just really bad at programming them, so all our songs had the same beat until then,” he laughs.

Despite their recent runaway success – fuelled by their cute, catchy single Young Adult Friction – Berman remains modest and grounded.

“I always keep in context that it’s only a small group of people who care about us in the grander scheme of pop music. I’d rather be a band that a few people care a lot about than a band that a lot of people only kind of care about.

“We don’t have ambitions for hugeness, just meaningfulness.”

music@nowtoronto.com