Vampire Weekend Give a ‘Salute to Indie’ With Covers of Phoenix, TV on the Radio, More

Vampire Weekend headlined Pasadena festival Just Like Heaven last night, and along with delivering their own songs, they dedicated a portion of their set to give a “salute to indie.”

The band have recently been taking crowd requests for snippets of covers. This time, they handpicked the groups and songs they decided to perform brief covers of during their set. They started with Phoenix, who played the fest last year, and delivered their song “Lisztomania.”

“Now a friend of mine said that Tame Impala’s not an indie band. He said they were psychedelic rock,” Ezra Koenig said before introducing the next song. “Well, if my friend is correct, and I’m not sure he is, but if he is correct, you don’t have to be an indie band to make an indie banger.” They then launched into Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know the Better.”

“Now this next number belongs to a group that for my money is the absolute finest of all the East Coast millinial indie bands,” Koenig said ahead of their performance of Beach House’s “Space Song.” They followed it up with Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks,” and TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me,” before closing out the set, per setlist.fm, with their own “Walcott” from their 2008 self-titled debut.

The festival also featured the recently reunited Rilo Kiley, who kicked off their reunion tour at Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo on Monday; Empire of the Sun; Bloc Party; and TV on the Radio.

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Vampire Weekend, who released Only God Was Above Us last year, head to Boston Calling next on May 25, followed by a string of tour dates and festival appearances that run through September.

From Rolling Stone US.