While I went to college with the members of Vampire Weekend, I was a couple grades above them, so I didn’t know them super well at the time. I was in the same P.E. Basketball class with one member, and generally ran in the same social circles as the rest, to the extent that I happened to attend a few of their earliest shows (despite having already graduated), including the one depicted on the cover of their full-length debut.

I remember that show vividly, as it was at a huge house party on campus, and as a result, was by far their most crowded show up to that point. And despite hearing the songs mostly for the first time, the crowd went nuts — everyone was pretty much dancing and swaying the entire time, as if they’d heard these songs all their lives. For the first time, I thought to myself, “these guys are gonna be huge.”

So when band member Rostam Batmanglij emailed me out of the blue a year later asking if i’d be interested in making their website, I answered in the affirmative.

He had seen the work I did on These Are Powerful Hours and liked it so much that in one of his initial emails, he straight up photoshopped Vam... Read more