After Six Years of Silence, Vampire Weekend Will Finally Release Fourth Album

Attention all Vampire Weekend fans! It’s finally happening! After six long years, Ezra Koenig, the band’s lead singer, has finally spilled the beans about a fourth album. In a long Instagram post published on January 17, Ezra shared some details about the new album. It will consist of 18 songs, and we’re getting the first two this week! To top this amazing news off, we will get two songs every month until the album’s release sometime in April.

Vampire Weekend is still keeping up the mystery by only giving us the initials of the album title, which are FOTB. This is a huge change considering the working title for the album was originally Mitsubshi Macchiato. Either way, the Internet is already going wild trying to figure out the full name. We saw guesses ranging from “Fall Out the Boy” to “Fresh Off The Boat.” Be sure to let us know what your guesses are in the comments below or by tweeting us @soundigest. Either way, Ezra promised an hour’s worth of new music. That’s two whole vinyls if you are planning on getting an analog copy of FOTB.

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To the fans:⁣ I know that 5-6 years is considered a long time between records. Personally, I think it’s a dignified pace befitting a band that’s already placed three albums in stores but everyone has their own sense of time. (I swear the time between 3 & 4 felt shorter to me than 2 & 3. I may be in the minority on this one.) ⁣ ⁣ This album didn’t really take any longer to write/record than MVOTC. We just took more time on the front end to chill. I’ll admit I may have stretched out the mixing/mastering process (aka THE END) a little bit cuz spending half the day with my family & half the day at Ariel’s is my ideal life-rhythm & it’s painful to say goodbye to that rhythm.⁣ ⁣ Many of you have been hungry for information and we’ve given you very little. I don’t like talking abt a project while in the middle of making it. I usually regret everything I say cuz it turns out to be wrong (so disregard anything I may have said in the past 5 years.) I thought abt making a recording diary to tide over the people leaving intense comments but…to me, the album IS the recording diary…man.⁣ ⁣ It’s called “FOTB” (well those are the initials – that’s a VW tradition) and it’s 18 songs. Picked the name a few years ago. At some point early on, the album drifted from the Mitsubishi Macchiato aesthetic. It was a helpful guiding principle tho. Working titles are important too.⁣ ⁣ It’s a lot of songs but they all belong there. (If you disagree, you can always say it was 6 songs too long & make a lil 12-song playlist version of it.) At first, I wanted to make two 23-song albums on some human chromosome shit but then 23&me started doing Spotify playlists and I don’t know…felt we’d been scooped.⁣ ⁣ Is it a double album? The vinyl will be double so…yes? It’s about 59 minutes long. We can talk more abt that later – if u care. To me, it’s just FOTB.⁣ ⁣ Anyway, we’re gonna start releasing music next week. After all that waiting, you should have the general schedule:⁣ ⁣ -There will be three 2-song drops every month until the record is out. 1. hh/2021 2. s/bb 3. tl/uw. (plans can change that’s the plan)⁣ ⁣ Thank you for ur patience,⁣ Ezra

A post shared by Ezra Koenig (@arze) on Jan 17, 2019 at 1:05pm PST

FOTB will be Vampire Weekend’s first album without Rostam Batmangliji. Rostam was one of Vampire Weekend’s founding members who helped start the band at Columbia. As of now, it looks like the band will be releasing the new album as a trio. Rostam publically left the band in 2016 to work on solo projects, but said he will collaborate with Koenig in the future.

In the past few years, Vampire Weekend has played minimal shows. However, they are already slated to headline a few festivals including Hangout Fest and Firefly. With FOTB on the horizon, we are hoping for some more tour dates soon. Until then, look out for the first taste of album number four this week.

Featured Image: Instagram (@arze)