Album Vampire Weekend (Vampire Weekend). Songs and videos online

The band's first album Vampire Weekend was released January 29, 2008. A success in the US and UK, it peaked at number 15 on the UK Albums Chart and number 17 on the Billboard 200. Four singles were released from the album; while "A-Punk" peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Modern rock chart and number 55 on the UK Singles Chart, "Oxford Comma" peaked at number 38 in the UK. "A-Punk" was ranked the 4th on Rolling Stone's list of Best Songs in 2008. "A-Punk" was also used to open the Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly feature Step Brothers, and featured in the UK television show, The Inbetweeners, and the video games Guitar Hero 5, Just Dance 2 and Lego Rock Band.
During the early stages of their career, substantial media attention surrounded Vampire Weekend's incorporation of African pop sounds into American music, but despite an admitted love of African music, and Koenig's explicit mentioning of 1980's Madagascar pop music as a source of inspiration for the band, Vampire Weekend has always maintained that they are not "an African band". Koenig went so far as to say in interviews that Vampire Weekend feared being perceived as part of what he saw as a western trend of "fetishizing" world music, and would be hesitant to follow so directly in the footsteps of former greats such as Paul Simon in collaborating with and making too great a deal of foreign musicianship in American pop.