Videos : Learn how to be a real guitar hero with Vampire Weekend and The National

Q TV brings you an assortment of Indie Rock luminaries to teach you how to play your favourite tracks on guitar.

Our first one on one lesson is with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig showing us how to recreate "A-Punk".



The National's Aaron Dessner gives us a "Fake Empire" lesson.

Hear the brand spankin' new Vampire Weekend track Horchata

Vampire Weekend are offering you an exclusive free download of Horchata; the first track off Contra - the band's highly anticipated full length follow up to 2008’s gold selling debut.

Contra is bustling with fresh ideas, and yet it sounds immediately familiar; it’s heavily layered but taut and kinetic; it chews ravenously through sound palettes and rhythms, and yet it’s nimble and assured; it’s still breezy, and yet it smolders with a newfound emotional heft. The songs are catchy, fast, twinkling, clattering.

“I think we sound more like Vampire Weekend than we did on the first record,” says drummer Christopher Tomson.

“It’s sadder than the first one, a bit more sentimental,” says singer Ezra Koenig.

Click 'Embed' below to get your own Vampire Weekend player

DOWNLOAD: Horchata [mp3]


Vampire Weekend's new album Contra is due out in Australia on 8th January 2010 through XL/ Remote Control.

Looking for mp3s?
Check out our free mp3 download page here!

Vampire Weekend reveal details of second album

Does this girl look familiar?
You may have seen her nordic face mysteriously popping up all over music blogs of late.

Today it has been revealed as the album cover for Vampire Weekend's highly anticipated second album.

Contra is the follow up to the band's gold-selling self-titled debut album.

Also revealed was the album's tracklisting:

01 Horchata
02 White Sky
03 Holiday
04 California English
05 Taxi Cab
06 Run
07 Cousins
08 Giving Up the Gun
09 Diplomat's Son
10 I Think Ur a Contra

Salivating fans will have to wait until January 8th 2010 when it will be released through XL via Remote Control. In the meantime, be sure to keep an eye our blog for further updates.

New Discovery mp3 (Vampire Weekend/ Ra Ra Riot Side Project)

So about a month ago we mentioned a side project that Vampire Weekender Rostam Batmanglij had been working on with Ra Ra Riot singer Wes Miller.

To the delight of many curious fans, details have surfaced of Discovery’s new LP which is set to be released through XL later this year.

Some highlights from the very literally named ‘LP’ includes an Autotuned cover of the Jackson 5’s classic “I Want You Back”, a remix of Ra Ra Riot's "Can You Tell" (re-dubbed "Can You Discover?") and vocal contributions by Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Dirty Projectors' Angel Deradoorian.

If you haven’t had time to ‘discover’ Discovery you can hear tracks up on their MySpace and here on stereogum.

Orange Shirt [mp3]

Osaka Loop Line [mp3]

Discovery LP out July 10 in Australia through XL/ Remote Control.

myspace.com/discoverdiscovery

Looking for mp3s?
Check out our free mp3 download page here!

Vampire Weekend talk about their second album

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Following Vampire Weekend's performance of new track White Sky on the Jimmy Fallon show, the band continue to tease us with more information about their second album.

Stereogum have given the heads up on an interview singer Ezra Koenig did with EW.com:

"For the last month or so, it's just been us by ourselves in this small studio, working every day," Koenig says. "It's nice after having been on tour so much to be in a slightly different situation, but it's pretty intense. We're really trying hard to do everything that we want to do."

With the songwriting process more or less finished, Koenig says the band has moved on to refining its studio approach. "It's definitely going to be a recognizably Vampire Weekend sound, but there are going to be new sounds. We're trying to challenge ourselves not to use the same bag of tricks that we used on the first album -- different instruments, stuff like that."

One new song that's almost certain to wind up on the album is "White Sky," which Vampire Weekend brought to Jimmy Fallon last month. Notes Koenig: "The recorded version is very different from how we played it on Fallon. Because we were still working on the recording, we decided to do this very slow acoustic version [on TV]. The real version is more like how we've been playing it live. There's a lot of synth sounds, and it's a little more pumped up."

Stereogum also have a couple of mp3s of keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij's side project called Discovery. Check them out here.

Vampire Weekend perform White Sky

Well looks like Vampire Weekend's Late Night With Jimmy Fallon appearance was up on Youtube for about half a second before getting taken down is back up on Youtube in all it's glory, so catch it while you can:



And here's an mp3 of the band's perfomance of White Sky, complete with string section, as posted by the good ole folks at Stereogum

White Sky (live on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon) [mp3]

Vampire Weekend to perform new song on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

Vampire Weekend are performing on Late Night with new host Jimmy Fallon tomorrow morning our time.

They have promised to perform "White Sky" which they have been performing live at shows but is as yet unreleased.

Here's hoping it won't be too long before it's up on YouTube.

Vampire Weekend vs Miike Snow

Vampire Weekend's latest single The Kids Don't Stand A Chance has been given an electro makeover courtesy of Miike Snow's production wizardry.

Miike Snow are Swedish producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (aka Bloodshy & Avant, producers and songwriters of Britney Spears's "Toxic" and "Piece of Me") and musician Andrew Wyatt (Fires of Rome, Black Beetle).

You can hear their remix of The Kids Don't Stand A Chance over at RCRD LBL.

Vampire Weekend awesome foursome in triple j hottest 100

The triple j Hottest 100 countdown over the Australia Day long weekend was highly anticipated as always, with a mixed bag of surprising and somewhat predictable moments, charting what triple j listeners rated as the best singles of 2008.

New York boys Vampire Weekend consistently came up as favourites, with four tracks from their self titled debut album appearing on the list (the most of any other band, tied with winners Kings of Leon), cementing them as one of the stronger new acts to come out of '08.

The fans' favourite tracks Vampire Weekend tracks were :
Oxford Comma at #30,
A-Punk at #32,
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa at #52 and
One (Blake's Got A New Face) at #71.

For the full Hottest 100 head to triple j.

Peter Gabriel and and Hot Chip cover Vampire Weekend

"And it feels so unnatural. Peter Gabriel, too."

With a chorus line like that, how could Peter Gabriel not do a cover of Vampire Weekend track Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa? And with electric keyboard help courtesy of Hot Chip, this is the result:

"It feels so unnatural. Peter Gabriel, too. And it feels so unnatural to sing your own name."

Vampire Weekend and Chromeo

Vampire Weekend performed their new single The Kids Don't Stand A Chance with Chromeo at the MTVU Awards, featuring a nice bit of vocoder action half way through.

Vampire Weekend perform on Late Night With Conan O'Brien

Vampire Weekend perform the track The Kids Don't Stand a Chance from their self-titled debut album on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, complete with string quarter.



And if you haven't already, be sure to check out the footage of a hardcore Ezra with Fucked Up thrashing out some rawk. [video link]

More videos from Fucked Up's marathon show

Recorded at their 12 hour show last month is a performance of Fucked Up covering the Black Flag track Nervous Breakdown.


Also joining Fucked Up on a couple of songs was Ezra from Vampire Weekend who unleashed his inner punk on Blitz and Descendents covers.

Someone's Gonna Die and Parents

Fucked Up and Moby do the Blitzkrieg Bop

Continuing their whirlwind few months (which includes an NME cover and fucking up MTV's bathroom), Fucked Up recently put on a free marathon 12 hour show in New York featuring a heap of guests. Having previously worked with many collaborators including Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), that guy from AFI and Nelly Furtado, Fucked Up continued their eclectic ways with guest appearances including Ezra of Vampire Weekend (like you've never seen him), Tim of Les Savy Fav, Vivian Girls, J. Mascis and Chris of Mind Eraser (aww, spoon). Moby also joined the band to perform a cover of Blitzkrieg Bop:


To give you a sense of how epic this show was, here's the setlist. Epic indeed.
View pics from the event here, here and here.

Fucked Up's new album The Chemistry Of Common Life has just been released. If you missed them before, here are a couple of tracks from the album:

Twice Born [mp3]


No Epiphany [mp3]

Vampire Weekend + Devo = ?

Vampire Weekend have teamed up with Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh to record the track Ottoman for the soundtrack Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.

Also featured on the film's soundtrack are Devendra Banhart, Band of Horses and Shout Out Louds. You can read more about the film and soundtrack at Stereogum. You can watch the film trailer here.

Ottoman


You might recognise one of the lines in Ottoman ("feels so unnatural/ Peter Gabriel too") as also being from Vampire Weekend's latest single Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. The video for the track was directed by UK comedian Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd, Mighty Boosh). You can watch it here:


Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut album is out now.

myspace.com/vampireweekend