A Weekend on the Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is home to plenty of impressive artistic symbols, including Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and the Manhattan School of Music. At the Columbia University campus, one can find a terrific legacy of art and music: Allen Ginsburg, Art Garfunkel, and Tony Kushner, to name but a few, all traversed College Walk to get to class.

Rising from Columbia's storied past and reputation could be considered difficult, but the campus's latest offering, the indie rock band Vampire Weekend, is garnering attention and success quite deftly, even though the band has only been playing for just a year and a half. Its biggest show yet takes place tomorrow night at the Bowery Ballroom, along with the White Rabbits and the Dansettes.

The four members of Vampire Weekend — vocalist and guitarist Ezra Koenig, keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij, drummer Chris Tomson, and bassist Chris Baio — met during their early years in school (all but Mr. Baio graduated in 2006; Mr. Baio graduated this month). Each member was involved in music while at school: Mr. Koenig performed in his own rap-rock outfit L'Homme Run, composing songs that Vampire Weekend would eventually perform, and Messrs. Koenig and Baio performed in high school bands in northern New Jersey and Bronxville, N.Y., respectively. Vampire Weekend played together for the first time in February 2006 during Lerner Hall's "Battle of the Bands," where the group placed third out of four slots.

"We took it semi-seriously," Mr. Koenig said earlier this week, "but we did not take the judging of the contest seriously."

Last summer, the band eased up on playing so Mr. Baio could travel to Russia before his senior year of college and Mr. Koenig could train to be a teacher (he is currently an eighth-grade teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant). The band's first off-campus show was staged last August at Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg.

"We only had mp3s to offer," Mr. Baio said. "We created our My-Space profile the day of that show." They have since played at the Mercury Lounge and Park Slope's Union Hall.

The band, which plans to release 1,000 copies of a new EP on June 16 before launching a month-long national tour in July, records its songs on a laptop in friends' basements and at Mr. Tomson's parents' house in Imlaystown, N.J., — not far, as Messrs. Koenig and Baio pointed out separately, from the Six Flags Great Adventure theme park. It's this kind of slightly hilarious, slightly wistful humor that galvanizes the band's songs. One of the its most well-known singles, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is about almost that: vacationing in Cape Cod, taking a dark look at the women who populate the island, and pining for home.

Apart from being a social magnet for Columbia alumni who want to run into their friends at shows, Vampire Weekend creates smart and sharp indie rock with earnestness, which has attracted a steadily growing audience. "It's exciting to see people you don't know at shows," Mr. Koenig said. "Everyone's excited, even our original fans. They think the success is great."

The July tour, which includes performances at the Troubadour Lounge in Los Angeles and a house party to be thrown by a rabid fan in Roanoke, Va., promises to be an educational experience.

"We just got a booking agent last week," Mr. Koenig said. From a closer perspective, the band is still extremely fresh. But Vampire Weekend carries itself with a youthful hope, and a professional air that belies its inexperience.

Vampire Weekend will perform Saturday at the Bowery Ballroom (6 Delancey St. at the Bowery, 212-533-2111).