Vampire Weekend: The Graduates

Photographs by Matt Jones

Even though they were all still students, the members of Vampire Weekend quickly adopted a professional tone. "I just felt it was important to have ten songs recorded," says Batmanglij, "even when we only had four written." In short, they were doing the same sort of high-work, low-reward business that bands have plugged away for decades. But thanks to the Internet, Pro Tools software, and Batmanglij's MacBook, rewards could come more quickly. Gradually, the band recorded the songs that would eventually wind up on Vampire Weekend -- a friend's violin captured in a dorm room here, drum work in a campus studio there. Batmanglij burned the results onto bright blue CD-Rs that were sold at early shows and distributed to key tastemakers like Stereogum's Amrit Singh. "It was pretty aggressive," Koenig admits.

Interestingly, none of the CD-Rs were ever sent to actual record labels. "That seemed ultimately fruitless," says Koenig. "These people don't want to listen to some random thing they don't have any context for." (When I ask Batmanglij if they at least partook of some fancy meals from major-label reps, he responds with a yawn. He actually yawns.)

Instead, the band worked the newly developed middle -- an incestuous network of fans, bloggers, and music-biz outsiders who seemingly can disseminate worldchanging hype at the touch of their iPhones -- and created their own context. Derek Davies, the blogger behind Good Weather for Airstrikes, saw Vampire Weekend at a Columbia show in February 2007 and copped a CD-R. One month later U.K.-based XL A&R rep Imran Ahmed and music-industry attorney Nicky Stein each independently e-mailed Davies asking to pick his brain when they were in New York on their way to South by Southwest. At both meetings, Davies talked up Vampire Weekend. "Then, after South by Southwest, both sent me e-mails calling Vampire Weekend the best new band they'd heard all year," says Davies. "And the rest is pretty much history." The gamble paid off: So-called "old media" -- labels, MTV, The New York Times, even national magazines -- were quickly forced to respond to the buzz.

"There was kind of a tipping point in April of 2007," says Tomson, invoking a Malcolm Gladwell buzz phrase. "Suddenly, at our shows there'd be more nonfriends than friends." Just two months later, Koenig decided to forgo his nascent teaching career and instead concentrate on the band full time. "By June it was incredibly obvious that we really needed to go on tour and play our music for more people," he says. At each stop on that national tour they were greeted by fans who knew the songs from the blogs. By the time they returned to New York in August -- with Batmanglij behind the wheel, blasting the Killers triumphantly on the George Washington Bridge -- they had landed themselves a record deal, a booking agent, and a manager.

As for the perception that Vampire Weekend, who like to toy with a children-of-privilege image, haven't worked hard for their success, XL's Chen disagrees vehemently. "They've done more than what a lot of bands do a couple of years into their careers," says Chen. "Three tours driving around the country with no tour manager, pooling their money to buy a minivan -- they made these decisions because from the gut they knew it was the right thing to do. Some people will stress over whether Vampire Weekend have 'paid their dues' -- all it takes is a little Googling to see that they have."