Derek Pressnall’s enthusiasm is warm and contagious. Get him talking about creating music or playing live, and he’ll get a light in his eyes and say, “I love it.” He’s the veteran, been in a few bands before, and brings a certain sense of knowing how things go. On tour, bandmates would call him Daddy Derek because he’d lay down the law about making too many stops: “Nope. We’re either getting Burger King, or we’re not eating.”

Nik Fackler wears a ridiculously huge pair of gloves, monstrous and furry. He’s fun and young, but he’s directed a feature-length film, Lovely, Still, which stars Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn—and Elizabeth Banks and Adam Scott. Film will always be part of his life, he says (he’s been directing the band’s music videos), but it’s good to do music now, while he’s young.

And then there’s Sarah. Sarah Bohling has babydoll eyes; her lids might close if she tilted her head back. And she has big pouty lips. When you hear her sing in her smooth, sultry voice, it suddenly makes sense: She was born to be a rock star.

Icky Blossoms is big on being greater than the sum of its parts (The line is used on their website, ickyblossoms.com). The three individuals started exploring musically together last winter. Something clicked, and soon their collaboration became Icky Blossoms—an indie-rock band with a sexy beat, heavy on the synthesizers.

Saddle Creek Records picked them up, and their self-titled debut album came out in July. Then they went on tour, playing 36 shows before the year’s end. They played in Dallas, San Francisco, Philly, Chicago, even Canada.

Shoe and accessory design company Cole Haan invited them to play at a New York Fashion Week after-party. Each band member received a sweet pair of boots—and each raised a foot in salute as they talked about it. “It was really exciting to get out there and play our music for people who have never heard of us,” says Pressnall.

Even more exciting was returning to a city, like Denver, a few months later and discovering they had a community developing, a pocket of fans who knew the words to their songs.

“People even came in their Perfect Vision masks,” Bohling said, referring to their song’s music video. In it, a guy and a girl destroy a house, finally setting fire to it, and put on their dust masks emblazoned with Icky Blossoms’ logo before fleeing the smoke.

They did grow weary of the loop of tour, and the food: teebs, tubs, or subs. “Teebs. Taco Bell. Tubs, like tubbies. Like Cheez-Its. Gross gas station food. Subs. Subway,” explains Bohling. Being on tour, slammed together like a family on a road trip, they learned to communicate in new ways, learned to fight like siblings and get over it quickly.

And, of course, they grew as musicians and as performers. They got ideas for how to improve their current show and ideas for creating new stuff, the emphasis always on their live performance.

They’re playing in Austin, Texas, at the annual music and film festival South by Southwest this month. Find out when to catch them here in Omaha on their website, Facebook, or Twitter.