So where are you right now? Are you on tour?
Um, we're home. We just got back from Denmark and France. We're at my apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It's kinda sunny out and it's a nice day, just hanging out and we play an outdoor show tomorrow in New York, and then a week from tomorrow we go to Pitchfork Festival, and then go to the West Coast tour, and then to Europe again. So, since we have a little bit of time off, we're having a good 'ole time in Brooklyn.

You have a Portland phone number, right? Is that where you're from?
I grew up in the Philly suburbs, and then I went to school out in Portland and stayed there afterwards. So I was out there for like six or seven years. The thing is that Portland is really good and if you stay for more then a week you might be there for seven years. It's like a really friendly black hole, but instead of crushing you with super dense gravity, it crushes you with a comfortable life that allows you to have brunch and work a part-time job and just kinda get by.

How's the West Coast music scene different from the East Coast?
The weird thing is that there are so many good bands from Portland, and its such a small city. In Portland, everyone can practice in their basement, so all the bands are a little more jammy and more adventurous because they have eight hour band practices. You don't have to worry about paying rent on a practice space so much.

Did The Pains of Being Pure At Heart meet in New York?
Yeah, we were all kind of friends first and then the band came after because we'd sit around talking about bands all the time anyways. It was a different way to hang out, you know?

So where do you practice?
Right now I think we're in between practice spaces because we're on tour all summer so we are trying to avoid paying rent when we're not here. That's the nice thing about being on tour is that you don't have to have band practice.

When you're on tour, who drives the van?
I've pretty much exempted myself from any driving, I suck so much at driving that everyone is like, 'Anything but Kip driving.' It actually works out pretty good for me, I think incompetence is the way to go.

Do you ever have band fights?
No, we actually don't. I don't know if it's that we're all just really mellow or something. One thing that happens to us is around five in the afternoon, we get hungry and turn into monsters. For some reason, we are the grumpiest people in the world when we don't have something to eat for a long time.

What's your favorite roadside restaurant?
There's one down in the south called Shoney's. Peggy's from the south, she's from New Orleans so she's kind of an expert on this. We haven't gotten a chance to go to Waffle House as much as I personally like to because I don't exert myself and say 'I need to go to Waffle House.' But Waffle House is pretty crucial.

If you don't love Waffle House, you can't be in a band. I'm pretty sure that's a rule.
Honestly, like my most formative years were spent sitting in Denny's for hours upon hours drinking bottomless cups of coffee and talking about anarchy. Yeah, that's what I did for my entire high school life with my two friends. It was really cool. The two places we would hang out that were open 24 hours were Denny's and Dunkin' Donuts. It was like no one was ever in there so you could just talk about anarchy all you like. But Denny's and Dunkin' Donuts are doing re-branding campaigns where like the price of everything is going up and everything is upscale. I'm sure its fine from a business point of view, but it's not fun for teenagers to sit there for hours on end and not order anything anymore.

So where can you be alternative now, if not Denny's?
So the thing about Waffle House, I mean it's probably improved some, but it seems pretty tried and true about being cheap and affordable, friendly and hospitable, and there's one about every four blocks once you get south of Maryland. But Shoney's...Waffle House can be alternative, too, but if you really want to show off to your friends about your favorite place to stop and get food on tour, then it's definitely Shoney's.

What's the weirdest show that you have ever played?
We're really good friends with this band Titus Andronicus, and they were in high school at the time and we weren't. They invited us to their mom's pool house to play a party, and I don't know if their parents were out of town or something, but we played this high school party. I think they actually invited us so we could buy beer. We played in Ian's mom's pool shed, and it was totally packed. It was really one of most fun, weirdest shows ever in this little like 14 by 14 foot room all crammed in with actual teenagers drinking malt liquor in the suburbs. And I was like, this is totally what we're about but we're not actually this age. We're 25.

I've seen Titus Andronicus. They're awesome, but I didn't realize they were that young.
Well the guy grew a beard and that's how they trick you. It's like he used to be really clean cut and then he decided, 'I'm going to grow a big scary beard, that's what I'm going to do.' It's cool. He looks really good with it, though. We really love them a lot. They're not super young anymore, I think they're all 21 by now.

You guys have gotten a lot of buzz this year. What's been the coolest thing to happen to you?
This morning we did Matt Pinfield's radio show, and Matt Pinfield is totally a god, like 120 Minutes! We were talking about how Peggy's mom wouldn't let her stay up late on Sunday nights and let her watch 120 Minutes, so she had to VHS tape it and watch it on Monday. And now we're sitting there with Matt Pinfield, and he's like 'Oh, I like your new album.'

What were your favorite music videos when you were a kid?
I think the ones that always stand out the most were Nirvana videos, especially "In Bloom" where they're playing on the fake Top of The Pops and it's in black and white. It's been done a lot since then, but at the time it was like so cool and we were like 'Holy shit! They're acting like its the 1960s and they're this sensation in the 1960s but they're a sensation now!' The Nirvana videos were always cool. It was weird because anytime they played Nirvana videos, you were all like, 'Oh, they're playing Nirvana, Nirvana can't be stopped!' I was even bummed out by Nirvana Unplugged because I thought it was like the plot to making Nirvana more wussy or something. Like 'Oh we can't play Nirvana because they're too loud and they scare people too much, so we'll make them play acoustic guitars,' but they're still pretty awesome. They can't really keep Nirvana down from being awesome.

And you could only see their videos on MTV.
Yeah, and now I can go and just watch it on YouTube anytime I want. And basically, Smashing Pumpkins' "Today" video is pretty much the high point of the entire decade. Billy Corgan still had hair kind of like wussy but like rock hard, and then D'arcy looked like a boy and that was really cool because she was a girl, and then James Iha looked like a girl but he was boy and they wore shiny pants that were all sparkly. And I know in retrospect it is easy to be like 'Oh Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan went on to be embarrassing and weird,' but they were so cool on that song, and "Today" was maybe the most perfect song of the 1990s. I know I will get in trouble for saying this, but I like Smashing Pumpkins more then My Bloody Valentine. They made blissed-out American suburban alt rock jams that I still love today.