[8] Their second album, Contra (2010), was similarly acclaimed and garnered strong commercial success, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200, and featuring well-received singles including "Holiday".

Koenig toured with Dirty Projectors during a period of experimentation with African music, inspiring the band to incorporate world sounds into their earliest work.

[11] The band chose the name "Vampire Weekend" from the title of a short film project Koenig worked on during the summer between freshman and sophomore years in college.

[13][14] 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.

[18] The then-nascent influence of blog hype and internet buzz played a role in their success and led to a large prerelease following sufficient to support them performing on three tours before their debut album was released.

[20] The band made a television appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on February 1, 2008,[21] and on March 8, 2008, performed on Saturday Night Live.

The internet hype had its backlash, however, as critics reacted against a perceived image of Vampire Weekend as privileged, upper-class 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.

It is the band's first album to reach number one on the Billboard 200, and the 12th independently distributed album in history to reach the number one spot on the Billboard 200 since Nielsen Soundscan began recording data in 1991, while also being the first independent artist to have done so without ever having signed with a major label, after already established rock bands Radiohead and Pearl Jam and before Arcade Fire's The Suburbs.

The video for their next single "Giving Up the Gun" was also released on February 18, 2010, which included cameos from Joe Jonas, Lil Jon, RZA, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The band were also on the main stage at T in the Park 2010 at Balado Kinross, Scotland, on June 8, and played the Oxegen Festival in Ireland on July 9.

[36][37] In January 2012, President Barack Obama added Vampire Weekend to a short list of musical artists that he sought support from for his re-election campaign.

[38] The band's third album, Modern Vampires of the City was released in May 2013, and written and recorded in various locations including SlowDeath Studios in New York, Echo Park "Back House" in Los Angeles, Vox Recording Studios in Hollywood, Rostam Batmanglij's New York apartment and a guest house on Martha's Vineyard.

On May 11, 2013, Vampire Weekend were featured as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live with Kristen Wiig hosting, their third time on the show.

It was Vampire Weekend's second consecutive number-one record on the chart, as well as the nineteenth independently distributed album to top the Billboard 200 in the Nielsen SoundScan era (1991–present).

In September 2020, Modern Vampires of the City was put by Rolling Stone in their new list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, ranking at position 328.

[53][54] On the same day, Koenig revealed the band was in the studio working on their fourth album, at the time titled, Mitsubishi Macchiato, with Batmanglij contributing to it.

[56] Koenig, a vocal Sanders supporter, also promoted the candidate on social media and his Beats 1 radio show, Time Crisis.

[57] In April 2016, the band briefly performed at another Sanders rally in Washington Square Park, marking their debut as a trio, joined again by Longstreth.

[61] In March 2017, Koenig revealed in an elaborate Instagram update that during 2016 he had spent countless hours researching and writing music in libraries with grad students.

Additionally, he revealed that the album, given the working title of "Mitsubishi Macchiato", would feature a more 'spring-time' vibe and one of the songs would be entitled Flower Moon.

In a December 2017 interview, Koenig noted that Batmanglij was involved in a few songs, some of which was material that they had started working on long ago, and that their method of collaboration had not changed despite the latter's departure from the band.

[71] During their August 4, 2018 performance at Lollapalooza, where the band played fan favorite "A-Punk" three times in a row,[72] Koenig announced that Vampire Weekend's 4th album was done.

[77] Contemporary fans mirror these influences in their Deadhead inspired creation of unofficial merchandise including shirts, shorts, tie-dyes, and bucket hats.

American saxophonist, Sam Gendel, and Connecticut-based jam band, Goose, were commissioned to expand the song into twenty-minute and twenty-one-second versions.

[83] In late 2021, during an interview with Mark Hoppus, Ezra Koenig gave an update on the follow-up to Father of the Bride, stating that the band had been recording in England and Los Angeles.

[85] The release was accompanied by a newsletter written by Chris Tomson which revealed that the band's new studio album is partly inspired by the Indian classical music tradition, raga, after Koenig had taken a singing lesson in the style with Terry Riley in rural Japan.

To further promote the album, the group officially launched a podcast titled Vampire Campfire on March 7, 2024 via Swedish hosting company Acast.

[91] The podcast consisted of Koenig, Baio and Tomson gathered around an ignited fire pit in an empty lot detailing various topics and subjects relevant to the band including the making of the new album and forthcoming world tour.

The band was a last-minute addition to the first weekend Coachella lineup on April 13, where they invited Paris Hilton onstage to play cornhole.