From the inner recesses of New York City’s indie pop-industrial complex, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are a four-piece band with Kip Berman on guitar and vox, Peggy Wang-East on keyboards and vox, Alex Naidus on bass and Kurt Feldman on drums, and they are coming to Club Congress this Tuesday, Sept. 22.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are equal parts post-punk and shoegaze-pop—think The Cure meets Broken Social Scene. They aren’t afraid to hand over the reigns when it comes to their music either. It only adds to their sound—pop to the second power.

The Pains newest release is their Higher Than the Stars EP. It features the single “103” and a remix by Saint Etienne, which features simple boy-girl harmonies reminiscent of The Magnetic Fields but instead of cute similes, the Pains turn the love song into a simple one-hundred-and-three chorus line.

Sometimes music is a pure burst of unstoppable emotion and sometimes it is more of an equation. Plenty of bands have done well with numbers, most notably The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, a quaint, formulaic short songs about being in love. The Pains are likewise one of those bands that get back to the basics of being pure at heart.

Below, Kip Berman discusses being a big music nerd, music that you don’t necessarily need to take drugs to, working with a real drummer instead of an iPod and a little known Tucson connection.

AZNB: Where exactly from New York City are you from and what’s your favorite thing people say about New York?

KB: Kurt and I live together in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, while Alex lives in Williamsburg and Peggy lives in the East Village. I’m not sure what people say about New York, but if it’s good things, then I’m into it.

Your most recent release, the Higher Than the Stars EP, is a really fantastic record. The single, ‘103,’ is great. Tell us a little bit about the album, the remix by Saint Etienne and what you were going for.

KB: We had these songs that we’ve been playing live, but didn’t quite go with the album, or we’d written them after the album was recorded. We really wanted to put them out, so an EP seemed like a good way to do it. The Saint Etienne remix really blew our minds. We are big Saint Etienne fans, and to have such an amazing band reworking one of our tracks was something that was pretty surreal.

I hear a lot of different influences in your music, from post-punk to indie pop. Who are the artists who have influenced you the most?

KB: It’s hard to say, as we’re all kind of big music nerds. We like lots of stuff that maybe doesn’t sound like us, but in some way everything we’ve ever heard (or at least loved) must play some part in the kind of music we play. I think a lot of the bands we love are from Glasgow, like Teenage Fanclub, The Pastels, Belle and Sebastian, and Orange Juice. But I grew up on a lot of ‘classic’ American indie bands like Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Helium, Magnetic Fields and that sort of thing.

And I even liked a lot of ‘emo’ bands like Promise Ring, Braid, Sarge and early Get Up Kids. So more than any one band or sound, we just want to write good songs. That sounds vague, but to us, a good pop song isn’t about sounding like shoegaze, or emo, or twee pop or indie rock—it’s something that can exist in lots of ways.

What are you listening to right now?

KB: Well, I’m lucky that I live with Kurt from Depreciation Guild, as I’ve gotten to hear some of the new recordings they’ve done for their next record, and they sound really cool. There’s this one song ‘My Chariot,’ which I can’t get out of my head. I also love Zaza, who are a duo from Brooklyn that play music that inspires people to make some sort of reference to narcotics in describing their sound, but aside from those nights when Danny (the singer) and I play video games and drink Four Loko or Bud Lime, they’re pretty clean living. I guess there’s something about music that has a ‘drone’ to it that makes people think you need to take drugs, but I enjoy it when I’m just high on life. Late at night when we’re driving, I listen to Galaxie 500 This is Our Music. It’s good for that…

This year, you released both your Higher Than the Stars EP and your _The Pains of Being Pure at Heart _ self-titled LP on Slumberland Records. How has your relationship with that record label been going?

KB: Great! Mike and all of us are good friends, and he’s truly one of the best people in independent music. The label is legendary, but more importantly, he’s been putting out a bunch of current stuff that we really love, like Crystal Stilts, caUSE co-MOTION and the new Pants Yell! record. He’s just an amazing person. We are lucky to have been able to work with him.

Your last release, before both your EP and LP in 2009, was a self-titled EP in 2007. What were you doing in the time off?

KB: Well, most importantly we added Kurt, who plays drums. Up until that point, we had a drum machine and that made us pretty boring live. Maybe we’re still boring, but to anyone who thinks that, please consider that it could be worse—it could be three people that play along to an iPod on stage.

Our LP was recorded in the spring of 2008, so there wasn’t really as much of a gap as it seemed. It didn’t see release until 2009, but we were playing shows and writing pretty consistently in the time in between.

I see you’re touring Europe this November/December. Is this your first time going overseas as a band? What are you looking forward to the most?

KB: We’ve been fortunate to have gotten to tour Europe a few times this year. Once we went over for an entire month, and that was a really amazing experience. The thing I look forward to most is seeing so many of our friends. There’re these people in Leeds who used to be in a band called The Manhattan Love Suicides, and they are awesome people and we love to hang out with them. Plus, I get to stalk all my indie-pop heroes—last time we got to see Stephen Psatel and talk to Jarvis Cocker (swooooooon!). Who knows whom it will be this time, but I’m hoping for any member of Suede, or Justine Frischman, as I used to have a major crush on her and Elastica rules.

Are you all really pure at heart?

KB: We have dirty minds.

What is on the horizon for The Pains of Being Pure at Heart?

KB: Our EP comes out on Sept. 22 and we’ll be touring for the remainder of the year. Next spring we’ll hopefully start recording our next record. We’re psyched for that.

Is there anything you’d like to say to Tucson?

KB: Well, most people don’t know this, but the two girls that are on the cover of our album live in Tucson. Kendra Rutledge and her friend, Parry. Kendra took the photo too, as she did for the cover of our Higher Than the Stars EP.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart play Club Congress this Tuesday, Sept. 22 with The Depreciation Guild and Cymbals Eat Guitars. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $10 in advance and $12 day of.