But because there are songs about the correct usage of commas, bus lines crossing the poshest parts of uptown Manhattan, and even playwright Neil Simon’s daughter, focus has revolved less around evil spirits cavorting on a Saturday night and more on the band’s Ivy League foundations. The four are all too aware of this. Tomson confesses that the preppy aesthetic “is kind of a conscious decision. We play it up a bit. It’s kind of a joke but it’s also not,” he says. “But that’s not really something we wanna talk too much about. It’s obviously there but we’ll let people come to their own conclusions as to why it’s there.”
     For all the attention Vampire Weekend gets on account of their propensity for boat shoes, in stereo the band sounds far more sweet and swinging than smarmy or highfalutin, thanks to the unique presence of soukous guitars and other touches of African pop. The title of the band’s breakout track, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”. often doubles as an apt descriptor for their baroque schoolboy sound and Afrobeat straddling. Paul Simon’s world music opus, Graceland, has also been a popular touchstone.
     “One of the best descriptions was from a guy in Japan who got in touch with us on MySpace,” Tomson says. “He would write these messages in this kind of awesome broken English. He knew the words but the syntax wasn’t quite correct. He described us as Classic Pop. That sounded cool.” And that’s what matters most to these guys. More than the grammar lessons and the intellectual odysseys, they only care about one true thing: that it all sounds good.