More than half a decade, one lineup change, two solo albums, and a ton of co-writes later, Vampire Weekend have finally announced their fourth studio album. It arrives this spring via the band's new label, Columbia Records, and its initials are FOTB. (Full name forthcoming, but it definitely isn't Mitsubishi Macchiato, the record's working title.) To celebrate, we've compiled a list of (almost) everything Vampire Weekend have done since 2013's Modern Vampires of the City, from the wonderful and weird to the... just plain old weird.
Vampire Weekend take home the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album for Modern Vampires of the City. They were nominated in the same category three years earlier. "I think that loss to the Black Keys in 2011 really motivated us to work even harder on this album," Ezra Koenig said, tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
Ezra performs with Karen O at the Academy Awards. They do a duet of “The Moon Song." O's Oscar-nominated original for Spike Jonze's Her.
Ezra's long-held bromance with Chromeo's Dave 1 continues, as he appears on the funk duo’s album White Women with "Ezra's Interlude."
Ezra pops up on another song, this time appearing on masked producer SBTRKT's single "New Dorp, New York." It's one of the most significant features he does during Vampire Weekend's inactive period; the song even made it into Vampire Weekend's most recent setlists.
Bassist Chris Baio becomes the first member of Vampire Weekend to release a solo album: The Names, a loose exploration of electronic music, inspired by architecture and recorded during Baio's time living in London.
Rostam Batmangli—the founding member of Vampire Weekend who produced all of the band's albums—leaves the group.
Vampire Weekend's first show after Rostam's departure is an unconventional one: Ezra, Baio, and David Longstreth perform alongside the University of Iowa's a cappella group, the Hawkapellas, for a Bernie Sanders rally held at the school.
Drummer Chris Tomson releases his debut solo album, Youngish American, under the moniker Dams of the West. It was produced by Patrick Carney of the Black Keys.
Finally: Ezra gives an update on the next Vampire Weekend album in a lengthy Instagram post. Twenty-sixteen was spent "writing LP4, long days in the library researching w/ the grad students," he writes, while 2017 would be spent recording and finishing the record. He also reveals two working song titles—"Conversation” and “Flower Moon"—and confirms the working title for the album is still Mitsubishi Macchiato, calling it "a helpful concept."
After a few weeks of teasing, Ezra releases "Neo Yokio," an animated series chronicling the lives of young "magistocrats" in an alternate timeline version of New York that’s half-submerged in water. The Netflix series features the voice-acting talents of Jaden Smith, Susan Sarandon, and Jude Law, who apparently recorded his parts as a robot butler in between shooting "The Young Pope."
Vampire Weekend play their first proper show in four years, at Ojai, California's Libbey Bowl. Ezra, Baio, and Tomson are joined by new touring members Greta Morgan (of Springtime Carnivore) and Brian Robert Jones (of Human Natural).
Percentages be damned. During a set at Lollapalooza, Ezra declares that LP4 is done(aka 100 percent finished). All that's left, he says, is mastering. At an afterparty, Ezra plays new songs from his phone.
Ezra and his partner Rashida Jones reportedly welcome their first child: a baby boy named Isaiah Jones Koenig. Mazel Tov!
The wait is nearly over: Ezra Koenig announces that Vampire Weekend's LP4 is comingsoon and that, beginning next week, the band plans to release "three 2-song drops every month until the record is out." (So that would suggest an April release date.) He also teases the initials of the album's final title: FOTB, prompting some amusing guesses. Fam: Obtain This Bread—could it be?