“There is a sense of nostalgia that we’re capturing on this record that creates a different feeling compared to the first album. There’s a lot of layers musically and lyrically that conjure different emotions,”

“There’s a bunch of new sounds on this record too. There is more piano and I’ve got this little sampler from the 80s that you can sing into which takes your voice and maps it across the keyboard.”

– Rostam Batmanglij (via BBC)

Last night, Vampire Weekend took to King’s College in London for an intimate preview of what’s to come. Of course, what’s to come is the band’s forthcoming studio album, Contra, and because this was a preview, several of the album’s 10 tracks were performed. Thus, an opportunity presented itself to log on to YouTube early this morning in hopes of finding a few videos of last night’s performance, specially those featuring the new stuff.

Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything — apparently, no one brought a video recorder to the event. Fortunately, our search did however yield a few worthwhile videos from recent past performances. And since this was the first time we saw them, we figured we would share them with you. So, without further adieu…

Track 1 – “Horchata”

Track 2 – “White Sky”

Track 3 – “Holiday”

Track 6 – “Run”

Track 7 – “Cousins”

Five out of 10 ain’t bad…

Having to wait until January 12, 2010 unfortunately is.