Vampire Weekend

After graduating from college, the band self-produced their debut album while simultaneously working full time jobs, Tomson as a music archivist and Koenig as a middle school English teacher. In 2007, Vampire Weekend's song "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" was ranked 67th on Rolling Stone's list of the '100 Best Songs of the Year'. In November 2007, they toured the UK with The Shins. Success came to the band in the now common form of blog hype and internet buzz, built during the year that their album was on the internet before its official release. The internet attention led to a large pre-release following, which in fact enabled them to go on three full tours before their debut album dropped. They were declared "The Year's Best New Band" by Spin magazine in the March 2008 issue, and were the first band to be shot for the cover of the magazine before releasing their debut album. Four songs from the band's first album also made the Triple J Hottest 100, 2008. The internet hype had its backlash, however, as anti-fans and critics reacted against a perceived image of Vampire Weekend as rich, privileged ivy league graduates stealing from foreign musicians. One critic went so far as to call Vampire Weekend the "whitest band in the world", to which they took exception, given their Ukrainian, Persian, Italian and Hungarian heritages. Such reactions were not repeated for later world music inspired musicians, suggesting Vampire Weekend may have cleared the way for their style of fusion. Furthermore, this backlash was largely unfounded, as Koenig would later explain some band members got into Columbia on scholarship and that he himself is still paying off student loans.