You may be interested in doing js template strings with preact/react - no build tools required! Btw there's vscode support for this so you get syntax hilight too
Avoiding transpilation is nice, but so is avoiding a library altogether. I take this approach when I just want to get going with zero setup and zero overhead; if I'm going to the trouble to set up React then I'll want bundling, and at that point I'll probably just go ahead and configure JSX and TypeScript.