Vampire Weekend: The Graduates

Photographs by Matt Jones

Further, their success demonstrates a radical redefinition of the very term at a time when quantifiable benchmarks are increasingly defined not by units shifted or radio airplay, but by less scientific means. "success might mean a synch on Friday Night Lights," says Alexandra Patsavas, music supervisor for Grey's Anatomy, Chuck, and Gossip Girl, referring to the placement of Vampire Weekend's infectious "A-Punk" on an episode of the football drama last November. "It might mean a Letterman performance or inclusion on a magazine's free CD. There are still gatekeepers, just many of them and smaller gates."

"Nowadays, a band doesn't even have to play shows, let alone go on a national tour, to have a 'hit' record," says Mark Willett, a founder of Music for Robots, one of the most frequently visited MP3 blogs, alongside Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan, which regularly log downloads in the tens of thousands for every MP3 they post. (All of them jumped on the Vampire Weekend bandwagon way, way back in early 2007.) While outsize proclamations are nothing new in the fiercely proprietary world of indie rock, where record labels are brands and status symbols as much as a means of distribution, the current speed of buzz and its attendant backlash can be overwhelming.

"I don't think the opinions are entirely different than what we saw in prior eras," says Matador Records copresident Gerard Cosloy, who helped shepherd the careers of Pavement and Interpol, and who published the hilariously caustic fanzine Conflict (a sort of Paleolithic blog -- on paper!) in the '80s. "What's different is the vehicle for delivery and the unfettered access. One favorable notice on Stereogum can be instantly undermined by one or two sarcastic, pseudonymous commentators."

Indeed, parlaying this flashpoint notoriety into career longevity is the big challenge. Drooled-over acts like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have seen their fortunes falter when follow-up albums failed to deliver on the breathless promise (CYHSY's Some Loud Thunder sold 100,000 fewer copies than their debut) or the fickle blogosphere simply moved on. "Tapes 'n Tapes played no fewer than nine shows at South by Southwest in 2006," says Willett, referring to the annual Austin, Texas music festival. "Then their record came out, and people stopped caring." The travails of more recent blog bands suggest an ever-widening disconnect between the wishful hyping of fans and the reality of youth. Despite reams of breathless praise online for Florida-based Black Kids' scrappy pop, for example, nothing can change the fact that they only have a four-song EP completed. Nothing, that is, except the one thing bloggers have no sympathy for: time.

"All creative activity requires at least some time to mature," says cultural critic Malcolm Gladwell, whose book Blink examines instinct and split-second decision-making. "And one of the inadvertently useful aspects of the pre-Internet, pre-accelerated-hype era is that it allowed artists some enforced period of obscurity to develop their art. My biggest worry about the way hype works now is that we're in danger of discovering people before they are worthy of being discovered."

But this is not a worry that keeps the guys of Vampire Weekend up at night. They seem either unafraid of failure or absolutely certain of their own success. "Forget money," says Koenig. "People can make money however. Get a second job or tour."

And if a backlash were to kick in? "In some ways I'd love that," says Batmanglij, "because then we could just make our next album more quickly."