You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
My name is Rishi Keshe.
Here we go.
The band Vampire Weekend started in 2006 in New York.
Their third album came out in 2013 and won a Grammy.
But six years passed before they put out their next album, Father of the Bride.
This album's also been nominated for a Grammy for Album of the Year,
and the lead single from it, Harmony Hall, was nominated for Best Rock Song.
In this episode, Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend takes Harmony Hall apart.
I spoke to him along with producer Ariel Rekshide,
and the two of them detailed the winding path the song went down over several years before it finally took shape.
I'm Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend.
The very first time there was any bit of this song was me walking down the street kind of mumbling and saying something about Harmony Hall.
I found a voice memo that is the beginning of the song and I'm outside, you can hear other voices.
And I saw that was from 2011.
I was actually surprised by how old that was.
But, you know, time flies.
And so I remember thinking, like, okay, there's a phrase,
Harmony Hall, and there's, like, a vague idea.