Ezra Koenig

Reveling In Social Anxiety with Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend

The Suburbs and Contra contemplate little pink polos for you and me

Pazz & Jop Voter Comments: From Kanye West to The Suburbs

Watch Vampire Weekend And The Black Keys Do A "Sell-Out-Off" On The Colbert Report

​Well this is outstanding. Both the Black Keys and Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig showed up on Colbert last night to argue about who's gotten their music in more commercials. Koenig: "Are you challenging us to a sell-out-off?" Black Keys' Dan Auerbach: "Bring it on, Cape Cod!" Colbert: "Clearly ... More >>

Everybody Panic: Taylor Swift's Speak Now Scores the Lowest-Selling Billboard #1, Ever

"Peace, suckers." Photo via MySpace.​Bad news for anyone hoping to make a living off of selling recorded music ever again: after 2010 brought us such lovely milestones as the worst week for music sales in all of SoundScan history and the Kanye West record that wouldn't go platinum, 2011 has al ... More >>

Zach Baron's Top 10 Albums of 2010

Guess who? Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​Alright, let's do this, before I change my mind. With apologies to The-Dream, Sleigh Bells, Ted Leo, Kylesa, Swans, Zola Jesus, Marnie Stern, and all other vestiges of my punk rock past, and especially you Nicki Minaj, who missed both of my lists this year. ... More >>

Vampire Weekend's New iTunes EP Includes Their Cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm Goin' Down"

​Any last-minute digital-music shoppers out there are hereby advised that there's a new six-song Vampire Weekend EP up on iTunes today, mostly reprising their own work but including the whimsically bloopy cover of Springsteen's "I'm Goin' Down" that surfaced earlier this year. Given that the B ... More >>

Week in Review: Apollo Kids

​In the week one of this blog's authors inspired a short play about juggalo zombies and Lady Gaga, we celebrated by announcing the 2010 Village Voice/Redeye Distribution Day Party, featuring the great Marnie Stern, Hooray For Earth, and a bunch of others, including a wonderful special secret g ... More >>

Q&A: A-Trak and Armand Van Helden Talk (and Talk and Talk) Duck Sauce, "Barbra Streisand," and Doing Karaoke With Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig

Duck Sauce, mid-interview. All photos by Chris Klassen.​When A-Trak (Alain Macklovitch) and Armand Van Helden teamed up as Duck Sauce for last year's dance hit, "aNYway", we were surprised, then pleased, then completely addicted. The production duo shares roots in old-school hip-hop and club-f ... More >>

Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, on Getting Sued: "Given It's Our First Time We Just Want To Do It Properly"

​And so the oft-bemused back and forth between unwitting Contra cover model Ann Kirsten Kennis and the band she's suing, Vampire Weekend, continues. VW singer Ezra Koenig commented on the controversy last week via emoticon; Kennis, meanwhile, spoke from behind the shield of a lawyer. Now thoug ... More >>

Vampire Weekend Cover Model Ann Kirsten Kennis Speaks (Through Her Lawyer)

​Yesterday brought the news that a former "high-fashion model" by the name of Ann Kirsten Kennis was suing Vampire Weekend for using a 1983 photograph of her on the cover of their most recent album, Contra. Kennis, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, sought two million ... More >>

Last Night: Stephen Colbert Insults Vampire Weekend's Personal Hygiene

It's true, local swells Vampire Weekend were looking a little ragged on Stephen Colbert's television show last night, but that was no call for him to tell kindly VW drummer Chris Thomson that his hygiene level reminded Colbert of the notoriously unwashed teen star (and sometime Twilight vampire) R ... More >>

Week in Review: Michael Bolton is... JACK THE RIPPER!

Hey look, it's Michael Bolton. Photo by the intrepid Rob Harvilla.​In the week we attended a cocktail party at Michael Bolton's house, we learned that the god has a Kanye platinum plaque on his wall and the finest Scrabble board Toys R Us sells on his mantle. Our guided tour of New York's most ... More >>

Live: Vampire Weekend Stage A Physically And Emotionally Grueling Blowout At United Palace Theatre

Vampire Weekend/Titus Andronicus United Palace Theatre Sunday, January 17 I personally do not see anyone wearing the $30 bright-yellow "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" scarf available at Vampire Weekend's merch table -- and believe me, I'm looking -- but later it's rumored they're completely sold out, so ... More >>

The Times Mentioned Fucked Up Without Actually Printing Their Name Again

Rebecca SmeyneWhat a day that was​From a weekend profile of the perhaps slightly overexposed Vampire Weekend, detailing Ezra Koenig's improbable appearance at FU's late-2008 Rogan Store debacle:

Woe to Those Who Must Dance in Same Video As Esau Mwamwaya

New video for the Very Best's "Warm Heart of Africa"--one of many jams on last year's excellent record of the same name. A lot of things working against Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig here, none of them really his fault. But you are going to lose the dance-off to the Very Best's Esau Mwamwaya every ... More >>

Operation Ivy League: On Vampire Weekend's Vastly Bewildering Contra

It's definitely weirder, and definitely better.

Say Goodbye to 2009: Looking Back at the Year in Concerts

Last year's Stupid Party in Crown Heights. All photos by Rebecca Smeyne.​We're closing up shop early today, and getting a head start on the New Year by doing snow angels outside for a while. Last minute guidance on your own New Year's Eve plans can be found here and here. In the meantime, plea ... More >>

Today Is the Day Fucked Up's "Do They Know It's Christmas" Cover Arrives

​The first and hopefully last time we'll spend a morning typing "Do They Know It's Christmas" into iTunes. Matador promises that the long awaited Band Aid cover, featuring what Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham described to Pitchfork as "the best and the worst of the music industry," will hit ... More >>

Week in Review: Humming and Ready to Take Us On a Golden Ride Way Out Somewhere in the Yonder

​In the week we learned to our deep and lasting dismay what a Gummibar is, we counted down the worst songs of the '00s with the newly relocated F2K crew--peruse if you dare but do not blame us when you come in contact with something like "I Am Your Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)," or are ina ... More >>

Well, The Video For Vampire Weekend's "Cousins" Came Quick, Didn't It

First the song, now the Garth Jennings-directed video. The alley and Ezra Koenig show-and-tell here are a couple of sideways "Subterranean Homesick Blues" references, no? Plus confetti, tape art (Sam Bassett? Buff Diss?), cardboard cutouts, false limbs, one pretty unflattering black turtleneck and ... More >>

New Vampire Weekend: "Cousins"

​They have a beautiful new piece of art for every single, Ezra Koenig's voice was already weird and is getting artfully weirder, his ska ad-lib is better than Jay-Z's, his lyrics are ever more surreal, the band's playing three hometown shows in January that promise to relieve an unremittingly ... More >>

Photos: Fucked Up at the Masonic Temple, with Andrew WK on Keyboards

Andrew WK on keys. Pink Eyes, where is your loyalty? Fucked Up's New York shows always seem to coincide with historic American days: Inauguration Day 2008, the only time in recorded history when Ezra Koenig publicly covered the Descendents, and now the day after the Yankees won the World Series. An ... More >>

Play Guitar the Vampire Weekend Way

And now, Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig will show you how to play "A-Punk," using only your first, second, and fourth fingers. Modern Bride probably would not have folded if they had invested more time in guitar lessons. Just saying. Bonus: the National's "Fake Empire" and "Slow Show," below. The h ... More >>

Fucked Up to Play The Chemistry of Common Life In Full at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple

​The last time Fucked Up played an event-type concert in New York, it was the band's 12-hour stand at the Rogan Store, a terrible idea made awesome through the sheer force of good will behind it--within five minutes, the show was some unholy mix of the sweatiest ABC No Rio Saturday matinee eve ... More >>

"All I Have Left Are My Memories and This Copy of The Razor's Edge Signed by Asher Roth"

Stuff like this will always make Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig a good guy in our book, because it's not just any mind that could've enacted this bit of performance art, in which Koenig got the bland affirmation incarnate that is Asher Roth to sign Koenig's copy of Somerset Maugham's well-known nov ... More >>

Risk-Taking with Vampire Weekend, Wells Tower, John Wray, and the Happy Ending Series at Joe's Pub

The official theme of last night's Happy Ending Music and Reading Series at Joe's Pub was "taking risks." Host Amanda Stern credited this idea to musical guests Vampire Weekend, claiming that she'd polled disparate subjects (her landlord, a 311 operator, a physicist, novelists John Wray and Arthur ... More >>

The Top 20 (and Far Beyond)

Big year for metal, hip-hop, and Paul Simon/pigfucker reconciliation

The People vs. Vampire Weekend

How a band so polite and so rapturous inspired that much hatred

Hey Willpower at Death by Audio

Vampire Weekend Shirt Watch: Opening Ceremony Edition

More Fucked Up/Rogan Store Video Surfaces

I Knew M.I.A. Was Pregnant Before You

The Teenagers Are Grade-A Asshole Material

Vampire Weekend Pants Watch: Ezra Koenig's New Shorts, New Song

The Obligatory Coachella Photo Post

The Quarterly Report: Best Singles of 2008 Thus Far

The Quarterly Report: Best Albums of 2008 Thus Far

PLUG Awards: The Nominees You Didn't See

No Context: The Teenagers Live at Mercury Lounge

Live: Vampire Weekend, Not Sucking

Live: Vampire Weekend at the Bowery Ballroom

Vampire Weekend: Hated On Mostly

Please Ignore the Embroidered Dog Sweater

Vampire Weekend’s jaunty, wordy pop is meant to inspire joy, not rage

Hugs and Kisses 23: Vampire Weekend Bassist Chris Baio on His Favorite Records

C(a)M(i) J(ournal) 2007: Peter & Bjorn, Vampire Weekend, Black Kids

CMJ Day 1.5: Thurston Moore Vs. the iPhone

Dracula in Disneyworld

Vampire Weekend's goofy charms