Vampire Weekend at Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island

Currently signed to Columbia Records, Vampire Weekend is an American rock band based in New York City. The band was formed in 2006 and features lead vocalist and guitarist Ezra Koenig, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, drummer Chris Tomson, and bassist Chris Baio. Batmanglij left the band in the beginning of 2016.

The band fused chamber music, Afropop, and indie pop on their debut album, Vampire Weekend (2008). It has been praised as one of the best debut albums and features the chart-topping singles "A-Punk" and "Oxford Comma." Their 2010 album Contra was also highly regarded and achieved considerable commercial success, opening at number one on the US Billboard 200 and containing well-received singles like "Holiday." The band's popularity was sustained by their two studio albums, Modern Vampires of the City (2013) and Father of the Bride (2019), each of which debuted at the top of the US charts, garnered widespread critical praise, and took home the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in their respective years.

The name "Vampire Weekend" was inspired by the title of a short film that Koenig worked on while on summer break from his freshman and sophomore years of college. After watching The Lost Boys, a 1987 vampire film, while at home for the summer, Koenig was inspired to make a Northeastern version of the movie, in which a man named Walcott travels to Cape Cod to warn the mayor that vampires are attacking the United States. Koenig abandoned the project after two days. During his senior year, he edited the movie into a two-minute trailer.

The group started performing live around Columbia University in 2006, beginning with a battle of the bands at Lerner Hall. After college, the group self-produced their first album while holding down full-time jobs: Koenig taught middle school English and Tomson worked as a music archivist.

They now have four studio albums (with the fifth one coming out in a few months), and they have been nominated for several awards. Apart from the Grammy Awards they won, other awards include NME Awards Best New American Alternative/Indie Band in 2008, Q Awards Best Video for Giving up the Gun in 2011, and Q Awards Best Act in the World Today in 2013.