Today's Artist Profile is on one of my favorite new indie bands in the last couple of years, Vampire Weekend. Vampire Weekend was formed in 2006 in New York City and the band consists of Ezra Koenig on lead vocals and guitar, Rostam Batmanglij on keys, guitar, and backing vocals, Chris Tomson on drums, and Chris Baio on bass and backing vocals. The members of the band all met each other while attending Columbia University, and the band's name was inspired by a short film that Ezra made while attending college there. The band played a host of shows around the area, including a battle of the bands competition and the band began producing their debut album right after they graduated from college. Their self titled debut album was released in 2008 and became an immediate success, debuting at #17 on the Billboard 200 album chart, eventually going gold on the strength of such awesome tracks like the infectious "A-Punk", "Oxford Comma" and my favorite song from them, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa". The band appeared on the cover of Spin before the album was even released, heightening increased buzz about the band not bestowed on a new artist in a number of years. The band played a number of shows over the next year or so before settling down to begin work on their follow up album, Contra. Contra was released in early 2010 and was even more successful than its predecessor, debuting at #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart and producing fun tracks like "Cousins", "Giving Up The Gun", "Holiday", and "Horchata". The album has sold over 400,000 copies to date and the band undertook a series of tour dates following the album's release. The band is currently taking a breather before beginning work on their third release, with no release date firmed up as of yet. Vampire Weekend have always been that fun band that I can look to if I want to let loose and have a good time, one of the most entertaining indie bands around and a band to hear plenty more good things from in the future!
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