Weekend Warriors: Vampire Weekend's Powerful Debut

Whenever a band is the recipient of much advance excitement, resentment inevitably follows. Decisions are made and reputations formed, all before the music is even officially made available to the public. In the case of indie-pop band Vampire Weekend, hype and reactionary criticism have become permanent fixtures in its short two-year career. Singer Ezra Koenig sits in Fairway Supermarket's upstairs café on New York's Upper West Side, keenly aware of both the exhilaration and antipathy his band's self-titled debut album has inspired.

The four recent Columbia University graduates have crafted an exciting amalgamation of worldly sounds—a reverent homage to baroque pop informed by foreign backdrops-and somehow it's the most divisive album in recent memory among the bloggeratti. "It's been tough because with one Google search, you can read stuff that's over-the-top praiseworthy that it's almost embarrassing," he says. "But then there's the weird backlash, which seems based on not knowing us. And if I could just sit down with those people and talk to them, I think they would understand what we're doing." The singer's downy face reads incredibly earnest—it's almost as if he would set aside time to explain himself to snarky bloggers if only his group wasn't busy securing the title of the new Biggest Band From New York.

"Here's the strange thing," he continues, "We're just making pop songs. Sure, they can be exciting, but they can't change the world. So why get so worked up over a catchy song?"

Great question. Some complaints target the band's sartorial style, lamenting Vampire Weekend's tendency to dress like walking J. Crew catalogues. "We like preppy clothes," Koenig shrugs. Sipping his coffee, the singer is wearing a blue Ralph Lauren cardigan embroidered with flying geese, a green-and-blue plaid scarf wrapped firmly around his neck and, underneath it all, a pink button-down Oxford shirt. "I mean, this is normal clothing that everyone has," he asserts. "I would even call it 'anti-fashion'." Later on, he discusses the merits of boat shoes.