Some albums hit the ears with such winsome breeziness that they feel like wholly new joys, even if their influences are transparent. The self-titled debut by the Manhattan indie-pop quartet Vampire Weekend, out today, is one of those albums. With songs that reference grammar and hip roof architecture styles, lyrics that rhyme “Louis Vuitton” with “reggaeton,” and melodies so sweet they could cause cavities, “Vampire Weekend” is a casually sunny, precociously witty foray into keyboard and trebly guitar pop set to bopping rhythms influenced by euphoric African pop. The album is a potential indie-pop heavyweight, with all 11 songs capable of becoming adored singles — or iPod commercials.

“Can you stay up to see the dawn / In the colors of Benetton?” sings guitarist-vocalist Ezra Koenig in his keening alto on “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” just one example of Vampire Weekend’s mercurial songwriting gifts. The title spells out the band’s entire approach: Kwassa kwassa is a Congolese dance rhythm, and the song seamlessly blends the two worlds together, setting a gentle guitar line and bubbly percussion under a tale about a possible hookup.

“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” is the most literal mash-up of preppy and Afropop cultures, but it’s the general blueprint for what is going on throughout “Vampire Weekend.” If the rhythmic shapes aren’t outright African pop-inspired, they’re more indebted to the sparkling melodies of Indian pop (“Bryn”), ska-inflected (“A Punk”), or blithe cross-pollinations, such as the ska-highlife hybrid “One (Blake’s Got a New Face).”

The looser hybrids do the most to point toward what Vampire Weekend is capable of achieving. In “One (Blake’s Got a New Face),” bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson slow an airy beat down to a loping skeletal groove, which keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij spices with pulsating Tom Tom Club tones and Mr. Koenig underpins with tickling, ska-trebly guitar chords. Mr. Koenig sings at a nonchalant pace, and on the chorus the band answers his titular call in an upper-register harmonized response straight off a Ladysmith Black Mambazo record.

Mr. Koenig’s voice is the secret weapon here. It’s gentle but piquant, perfectly suited to Vampire Weekend’s easygoing tempos and pliable enough to soar into a dream croon in “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” and “Oxford Comma,” another witty amalgam of ideas. Yes, the title of the latter refers to a writing-style guideline — more frequently called the serial comma by American writers — and the song itself is a nearly inconsequential collage of sparse drum beats and a carousel organ line. Pulling it into swooning pop is Mr. Koenig’s vocal, which dreamily sings haphazard lyrics about relationship suspicions that feel disjointed on the page — “Crack a smile, adjust my tie / Know your boyfriend, unlike other guys” — but become memorably hooky on first listen.

That Mr. Koenig looks like a less-threatening Adam Brody probably doesn’t hurt, either. All four band members are Columbia University graduates, and they all have a well-spoken air and well-mannered appearance that makes those scruffy-haired ruffians in Bishop Allen look like Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Vampire Weekend is the sort of band for whom cute band alerts were created. (One song is even called “Campus.”)

This scrubbed and tidy image actually pinpoints just who Vampire Weekend’s true progenitor really is. Critics have invoked Paul Simon’s 1986 African-pop gem “Graceland,” and the band’s self-referential mention of Peter Gabriel in “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” has led to comparisons with the former Genesis front man. But a much more accurate positioning rod exists: Revisiting Haircut 100’s 1982 album “Pelican West,” with its fey ska and gentle funk-fueled new-wave pop, is akin to checking in with Vampire Weekend’s misfit uncle. That “Pelican West” sounds incorrigibly dated and formulaic today offers Vampire Weekend an object lesson in songwriting: Don’t stick to one trick.

Fortunately, Vampire Weekend is already showing signs of growth on this debut. “I Stand Corrected” starts off with Mr. Koenig backed by a mournful organ dirge, but the song soon flowers into a rich paisley of strings and throbbing backbeats. Even better is “M79,” named for the bus line that traverses east-west across Central Park. A jaunty string section and piano line sculpt its florid melody, with Mr. Tomson pushing everything along at a lively but not insistent clip. The song’s lyrics are part experiential and memory journey, which Mr. Koenig winningly tangles into a Walter Mitty reverie. The rhythm may be inspired by African pop, but the string arrangement pushes the song into the baroque and, for once, Mr. Koenig’s subject matter successfully escapes 20-something romantic ennui.

Curveball pop this lush, intoxicating, and sophisticated is precisely the sort of experiment that a band this young and promising needs to try on for size to avoid being remembered merely as this year’s model. But even if that’s what it is, Vampire Weekend deserves a listen.

Vampire Weekend performs tonight and tomorrow at the Bowery Ballroom (6 Delancey St., between Chrystie Street and the Bowery, 212-533-2111).