Vampire Weekend Bring Teaser Music Clip to Instagram - Watch Here

Vampire Weekend has taken to Instagram for a cryptic clip, showcasing a short instrumental with the copy "OGWAUteaser1.mp4." Have a listen below.

The band – Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio and Chris Tomson – have been making noise about a forthcoming release for the past few months. Only last month did they reveal that they have finished their follow-up to 2019's Grammy-winning Father of the Bride.

Tomson remarked in the band's newsletter from last July (via NME) that the new album was inspired when frontperson Koenig "took a raga singing lesson with Terry Riley in rural Japan and wrote what he considers to be 7 of his all-time top 10 best songs."

If you're not familiar with Riley, he is known as one of the inspirations for Pete Townshend's epic anthem "Baba O'Riley." However, it's his legacy work as a pioneer in electronic music and his long-lasting association with the Kronos Quartet that he is most aligned with, and is currently performing and teaching (at the age of 88) as an Indian raga vocalist and pianist.

And for anyone with curiosity about the symbols shown in the band's Instagram Stories, the first "moana" is a call to adventure, new life and growth while the second "capricorn" is a fearless, untamed spirit.

As for what the acronym OGWAU means, Brooklyn Vegan has noted that Redditors believe it stands for "Only God Was Above Us" and references a New York Daily News front page headline from 1988 about a Hawaiian Airline flight where the top of the airplane blew off mid-flight. Photographer Steven Siegel took a series of photos entitled Dream Subway of abandoned subway cars and an uploaded 2013 image shows a person reading that newspaper: a different photo from the same series is used on the landing page of Vampire Weekend's website.

Vampire Weekend's most recent output has been the vinyl-only limited edition of their 2019 live shows (in two volumes) from Milan, Frog on the Bass Drum. In the last release, their newsletter "The Quarterly Report," had Baio sharing this: "I’d like to conclude this update with the most exciting news: LP5 IS DONE."

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The group will be performing at festivals throughout 2024, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival April 25–May 4, the Kilby Block Party in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah May 10–12, the Primavera Sound 2024 in Barcelona May 29–June 2, and headlining the Hinterland Festival in Saint Charles, Iowa August 2–4.