One thing to note about the Kobo store is that it (unlike Amazon) lists the DRM status of a given book towards the bottom of the store page below the reviews. If you see something like "Epub 2 (DRM Free)" then that's the format that the book will be in if you download it.

You can download a book that you've purchased directly from the website on the My Account/My Books subpage. I've tested this out and it can be a good way to get paid DRM free ebooks, if that's what the publisher wants to sell.

Yea, I use calibre to strip it, have my entire collection backed up

I have the DeDRM plugin set up on Calibre and it's either it's working perfectly or everything I've bought from Kobo didn't come with DRM (I think it's the first one).

I think DRM on Kobo books is dependent on what the publisher requests or something like that. The few I have bought don't have DRM from what I can tell.