The Witzard

Just mere minutes before the stroke of 12 midnight New Year's Eve 2013-14, @vampireweekend Tweeted out a pretty self-explanatory mini-message: " wintertime remix of "Step" featuring Danny Brown, Heems & Despot . Happy New Years from Vampire Weekend ," along with a smarturl hyper-link. It's the kinda thing that probably shouldn't work anywhere near as well as it actually does, and I'd guess that this is your typical Pitchfork staff writer's ideal wet-dream collabo scenario ha. "Step" (Wintertime Remix) builds off frontman Ezra Koenig 's original, penned for Modern Vampires of The City and acts as the B-side to lead single, "Diane Young" [see below]. When juxtaposed against Koenig's past relationship reminiscing lyrics, Danny Brown, Heems & Despot manage to fit in surprisingly well with "Step"' s running theme. While the track's supposedly based off an unreleased and re-purposed Sou...

Following a largely un-fullfilled search for a copy of Modern Vampires of The City that aimlessly led me across Cumberland County , I realized that aside from 2-3 well-executed lyric videos, Vampire Weekend have yet to release a proper music video in support of their new album; Whilst still grabbing headlines by torching a couple Saab 900's and hanging out with "distant second cousin" Steve Buscemi , the New York -based band finally unleashed a "Diane Young" video Monday morning. Continuing a long-standing trend that started with "Giving Up The Gun" (2010), director Primo Kahn somehow managed to recruit a very interesting cast of characters: Chromeo , Dave Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Sky Ferreira , Despot , Santigold, Hamilton Leithauser (The Walkmen), and a ski-masked man that just might be cameraman Kahn himself. What starts out looking mysteriously like a modern-day Last Supper slowly morphs into a righteous "dinner party where g...

Without sounding like a TOTAL Hipster douchebag , which I can honestly assure you I am NOT.... I can vividly remember downloading Vampire Weekend 's self-leaked 2007 demo tape and burning it onto a Blue CD-R before anybody else even knew about them! Vampire Weekend are "Tribal -infused" in the same sense that The Police were a "Reggae" band , riddim [rhythm] and Funky melodies; Evenly spread across their then upcoming self-titled debut record, Vampire Weekend somehow managed to find a way to seamlessly blend Indie Rock , Pop sensibility, "Yacht Rock," Punk Rock ideologies, Tribal drums, keen fashion sense, and a wide variety of assorted influences. The band's follow-up, Contra (2010) is most def one of my favourite albums of the past 10 years and while it's chock-full of instantly catchy hit jams, nothing beats "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa!" Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Baio & Chris Tomson took a little break b...