I'm not sure that they really are that unique. There are hundreds of indie pop groups out there so you'd need to hear all of them to check.

Interesting that people talk about the overall sound. People nowadays do tend to just like a beautiful sound even if there isn't much beyond that.

Oh come on. Prove that they aren't original instead (I like them, so I would love to hear similar music :) ). When I heard Cape Cod Kwass Kwassa for the first time, I hadn't heard anything like it before. It's not just the african influences it's something more... Something about the way the riff completely stops every two bars... I don't know. It was unique to me.

And I think they changed their sound in a big way from Vampire Weekend to Contra. On Vampire Weekend it all sounded... organic and perhaps even a bit archaic... And the fact that they seemingly saw African music as archaic is of course a bit problematic... But on Contra, the influences are much more from South Africa, and the sound is much more electronic, it sounds like they've heard a lot of Timbaland and Neptunes in places. I just don't understand people who say they didn't develop between albums.

I just finished writing about what there is to them 'beyond' there great sound. They are emblematic of our time, with their politics and aesthetics and what-not. Or something like that.

The Centrifugue: The 'Unformulable' on Vampire Weekends Contra (10)