Barely out of high school and already looking like he's never going to have to get a real job, Brendon Urie is living a charmed life. Still, it hasn't all been as easy as it's looked for the singer-keyboardist and his Las Vegas–based band Panic! At the Disco.

First there was the stress that comes with landing a record contract when you don't have enough songs to make a record. Just as daunting was hitting the road months later in support of the resulting album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. Even as the group rolled out of Sin City, Panic! At the Disco wasn't entirely comfortable on-stage. The reason for that was simple: Urie, guitarist Ryan Ross, bassist Brent Wilson, and drummer Spencer Smith wrote and recorded their debut before they had ever played a live show.

“For the first week or maybe two weeks of our tour, we were really nervous and we sucked horribly,”  Urie says, on the line from a Columbus, Ohio, tour stop. “We're still not the best band live, but we've definitely gotten a lot better. Overcoming that obstacle of playing live was really hard. When you get on-stage, you have to put on a show, not make excuses for why you can't give the people what they are there to see.” 

Unknown in its own hometown two years ago, Panic! At the Disco is now the biggest act to come out of Las Vegas that's not named the Killers. Released with zero fanfare, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out eventually climbed to No. 16 on the Billboard charts, its initial success driven by Web hype and street-level buzz. For showing some foresight, emo pinup boy Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy deserves partial credit for the band's success. In what must enrage every musician who's ever loaded into a filthy tour van, Panic! At the Disco caught the attention of the bassist by posting songs in the comment section of his LiveJournal. Wentz promptly inked the group to his vanity label, Decaydance. Once Panic! At the Disco got over the shock of catching the attention of one of the biggest names in modern alt-rock, the terror set in.

“We'd only been together for about three months, and then the label signs us and says, 'Okay, you have to write a record in five months,'”  says Urie, who originally joined the group as a guitarist and backup vocalist. “We'd never written together at that point, and I'd only been the singer for a couple of months. It was a stressful, hectic experience because we didn't really know much about songwriting.” 

Panic! At the Disco's members are obviously fast learners. Unwieldy song titles aside, what's immediately striking about A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is the way the band is determined to mix and match genres. “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage”  starts out in the acoustic corner of emoland then proceeds to catch techno fever, and “But It's Better If You Do”  spikes its new new wave with saloon-boogie piano and flamenco-dusted guitar before shape-shifting into a carnivalesque waltz. Elsewhere, “Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks”  sounds like Duran Duran back before Simon Le Bon and company started banging supermodels on the shores of Rio, and “Cami?soda”  is piano-plinked alt-prog aimed at the Warped squad.

What may be most impressive about A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is how the record's variety leaves things open for Panic! At the Disco to veer off in any number of directions. Mixing baroque-pop keyboards with theatrical spoken word, death-disco dance passages, and distortion-jacked guitar sprays, the final song, “Build God, Then We'll Talk”  is the album's most out-there number. The track gives a good idea, Urie suggests, where Panic! will go from here.

“The last song is going to be where the first song on the second record picks up,”  he offers. “We're going to go more in that orchestral direction. I think a lot of people will dislike the next record, but we are definitely determined to progress.” 

For now, though, while he's not yet old enough to drink in most American states, Urie finds himself part of one of the hottest acts in America, which explains why Panic! At the Disco's upcoming Vancouver show sold out 10 seconds after tickets went on sale. The singer admits he's lucky, only partly because he's doing something radically different with his life than his parents had planned for him.

“I grew up a Mormon, so they wanted me to go on a mission””normally, I would be on a mission right now because I'm 19,”  Urie says. “Then they wanted me to go to BYU Provo [Brigham Young University] in Utah, which is kind of the standard thing that every Mormon kid does growing up. I wanted to go to a college for cosmetology if I hadn't done the band, so we wanted different things. That made it hard to convince them, at 17, that this was a smart thing for me.” 

Today, Mr. and Mrs. Urie count themselves part of an ever-growing legion of overnight Panic! At the Disco converts.

“Our first show ever was at home””we played to a sold-out crowd of 350 kids””and when my mom and dad saw all the kids singing along, even though we'd only been a band for a short amount of time, that's when they realized we could make a living off of this. Now they are our biggest fans””they come to every show in Las Vegas and buy all the merch. They're out there wearing the Panic! shirts and it's awesome.” 

That makes Urie a rare creature: a teenager who agrees on music with his parents. For such small blessings””not to mention the hit that is A Fever You Can't Sweat Out””the argument can indeed be made that Panic! At the Disco's frontman is living a charmed life.

Panic! At the Disco plays a sold-out Croatian Cultural Centre tonight (July 27).