I was a little concerned for The Pains of Being Pure at Heart going into SXSW. They seems to have the perfect storm of buzz going — they look and act like Vampire Weekend, they sound like Belle and Sebastian and Ride pulled into the blogging age and they arrived on the scene just in time to be eaten alive at SXSW.

But that wasn’t what happened.

No, instead of having a nervous breakdown on stage or sounding like some kids who should have spent more time in rehearsal, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart lived up to the crowd’s expectations. If anything, they actually sounded better live than they did on record. My only real complaint is that lead singer Kip Berman looked like he’d been practicing his frontmanship to a tape of Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. But as frontmen go, he could have chosen a worse role model. At lest Ezra’s memorable.

And even though I wasn’t as familiar with the band as pretty much everyone else in the front row, I enjoyed every song. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart might not grow to Vampire Weekend or even MGMT size, but I think they’ve got enough staying power to turn out at least a few more solid albums. If they were a publicly traded stock and I was Jim Cramer, I’d be yelling “Buy! Buy! Buy!” right about now.

More photos after the jump.