Core Members: Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Baio, Chris Tomson
Formed in: 2006, New York City, New York
Key Albums:Vampire Weekend (2008), Contra (2010), Modern Vampires of the City (2013)
• Complete Vampire Weekend discography
Vampire Weekend are a four-piece pop band from New York that have been one of the most hyped, criticized, and divisive bands in the indie blogosphere. Hyped before their self-titled debut album even came out, Vampire Weekend's riffs on African guitar-pop and polysyllabic lyrics —courtesy of frontman Ezra Koenig— have been met with critical accusations of cultural colonialism and Ivy League privilege.

They've also been hugely successful: their 2010 LP Contra debuted at #1 on the US and was nominated for a Best Alternative Album Grammy. Rostam Batmanglij, Koenig's creative foil, also records with Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot in the project Discovery.

Background

Vampire Weekend were born when Koenig and Batmanglij served as multi-instrumentalists in Dirty Projectors, the genre-splattering project of cockeyed crooner Dave Longstreth. "I played saxophone, guitar, keyboards," recounts Koenig, of his time in Dirty Projectors (which is documented on the New Attitude EP). "It was interesting to play what, on record, is chopped up digital stuff, but as part of a big band."

Yearning to make their own music, Koenig and Batmanglij roped in schoolmates Chris Baio and Chris Thomson (the latter who'd collaborated with Koenig in his oddball 'hip-hop' project, L'Homme Run) as rhythm-section, and named their band after a horror-movie Koenig dreamt of making. The quartet were all students at prestigious Columbia University, a fact that lead many reviewers to cite them as Ivy League children of WASPy privilege; a fact not quite accurate given their Jewish (Koenig), Persian (Batmanglij), Italian (Baio), and Ukrainian (Tomson) heritage.

"People have, in a very large way, assumed that we grew up privileged, simply because of the school that we went to," Koenig would say. "Nevermind that I received a scholarship from my dad's labor union and am still in the midst of paying back loans; it doesn't matter to people. They hear you went to a good school, and they'll start talking about what your parents must do for a living."

In 2007, Vampire Weekend recorded a batch of songs that they circulated as a self-titled CDR. The album ended up all over filesharing services, and Vampire Weekend found instant hype for their effervescent pop-songs (especially "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"), their influence from West African guitar-pop, and their sense of collegiate whimsy.

Vampire Weekend thus became one of the blogosphere's definitive buzz-bands, ending up being covered, criticized, dissected, and discussed long before their first album ever came out. "I think the internet makes things seem bigger than they are," Koenig would say, of the early hype. "It might seem like there's a consensus opinion out there, this whole movement of people out there thinking the same thing. But, most of the time it's just one or two people in their bedroom. We're sure that when we actually release our album, many more people will hear of us than have already."

Instantaneous Breakout

Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut album was released in January, 2008. The album spawned five singles —"Mansard Roof," "A-Punk," "Oxford Comma," "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance"— and cracked the Top 20 in both the US and the UK, eventually going Gold in the States and Platinum in Britain.

It made Vampire Weekend perhaps the definitive breakout band of 2008, with all the hype backed up by the success of both band and album. Where their music had, at first, seemed divisive amongst the blogosphere, the critical establishment hailed Vampire Weekend almost exclusively; the record ending up all over album-of-the-year and album-of-the-decade lists.

Almost two years exactly after the release of their debut, Vampire Weekend returned with their second record, Contra. An album based around the vague theme of California, it found more experimental production from Batmanglij, greater use of orchestration, and further episodes of lyrical storytelling from Koenig. "I think it'll be harder for people to hear this new album and pretend that our songs are about hanging out at the country club with our rich friends, or whatever ridiculous idea that people have tried to propagate," Koenig said, in advance of the record's release.

Contra proved even more successful than its predecessor: debuting at #1 in the US and Canada, #2 in Australia and France, and #3 in the UK. It was critically well-received —hailed, generally, as one of the Best Albums of 2010, and shook off the spectre of the Difficult Second Album.

The discourse about the appropriation of elements of African pop had died down, but Contra was not without its controversy. The album's front cover featured a faded, decades-old polaroid of a model named Ann Kirsten Kennis, who sued the band for use of the image without her consent. Vampire Weekend had acquired the right to use the photo from the photographer, Tod Brody, and eventually the case was settled out of court.

Modern Vampires

In 2013, Vampire Weekend announced the arrival of their third album, the cutely-titled Modern Vampires of the City. The much-anticipated record showed Vampire Weekend as a band willing to experiment with production, arrangement, and approach, whilst keeping consisting with their breezy-indie-pop sound.