Vampire Weekend Go Goth For New Video, Get Covered By Peter Gabriel

Love them or hate them, Vampire Weekend have carved out quite the style for themselves: button-ups, khakis and Banana Republic. Well, apparently these guys are as sick of their style as we are, opting to goth it up in their upcoming video for Graceland's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa."

Apparently the video, which finds each member dressing up like the Cure, is set in the ’80s and sees Vampire Weekend and company playing the parts of several characters, some with mascara, others without. According to MTV News, front-man Ezra Kroenig and the band got the acting bug and chose the music video to embrace their alter goth egos.

"We've done fairly abstract videos in the past, in that there's no narrative," Kroenig told MTV. "We thought maybe it'd be fun if there were actual characters. We used to shy away from anything that even came close to 'acting' in videos, but in this one there is interaction among people, so in that sense it is more of a story. There are preppy people in it and non-preppy people in it. So it was a chance to have some of our friends come be in the video."

We assume the band’s friends are the preppy people.

In related Vampire news, former Genesis vocalist Peter Gabriel has said he would like to cover "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," which gives him a shout-out.

"I actually do like that song a lot and they've asked me to sing a version of it now, which I may well do," he recently told the BBC.

However, Gabriel is unsure how he would deal with name-dropping his own name. "Well, I haven't quite worked that out whether I should be doing that or substituting it with a name that might be appropriate to me — I think playing with yourself makes you go blind after a while,” he said.

Nice one for Vampire Weekend to get old Gabe’s attention, but could someone tell us when it suddenly became cool again to actually like Peter Gabriel? Feel free to fill us in on Graceland while you’re at it.

By Brock Thiessen, exclaim.ca, 7/25/2008

Vampire Weekend "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" on Jimmy Kimmel