Vampire Weekend to Play Barclays Center on September 20 at 8pm.

BROOKLYN (April 29, 2013) - VAMPIRE WEEKEND has confirmed a headline show on September 20 at 8 pm at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Tickets to the band’s first-ever show at Barclays Center will go on sale beginning Saturday, May 4 at 10 am and can be purchased online via Ticketmaster by visiting www.barclayscenter.com or www.ticketmaster.com, or by calling 800-745-3000. Tickets are also available at the American Express Box Office at Barclays Center beginning Monday, May 6 at 10 am. American Express® Cardmembers can purchase tickets before the general public beginning Wednesday, May 1 at 10 am. through Friday, May 3 at 10 pm.

Vampire Weekend has also confirmed its return to Saturday Night Live: The band will play NBC's hallowed Studio 8H for the third time on May 11, with host Kristen Wiig.

The Barclays Center and SNL confirmations come in the wake of the recent announcement of Vampire Weekend's highly anticipated third album, Modern Vampires of the City. The album already hailed in a 4.5 star Rolling Stone lead review raving "dark but beautiful... Vampire Weekend has gotten better at just about everything they do... pushing into awesome new directions." Modern Vampires of the City is scheduled for release May 14 on XL Recordings. The new album is the band’s first full length collection of new material since its gold-certified sophomore album Contra, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart upon its 2010 release.

Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Rostam Batmanglij worked more closely than ever on Modern Vampires of the City. Most songs began one of two ways: either with Rostam creating musical beds over which Ezra would lay lyrics and melodies, or with Ezra providing lyrics and melodies around which the instrumental setting for the track would be sculpted. In the summer of 2012, the two traveled to Los Angeles to collaborate with Rostam’s longtime friend Ariel Rechtshaid, who shares production credits on Modern Vampires, marking the first time Rostam has had a co-producer on one of the band’s albums. Bringing along the results of sessions from New York and Martha’s Vineyard, the three began to stride towards realizing the finished album and were later joined by drummer Chris Tomson and bassist Chris Baio. A recently released double A-side single “Diane Young”/”Step”–which can be heard at http://www.vampireweekend.com – provides a first glimpse into an album flush with grandeur and romanticism evocative of the city where it was conceived. Church organs, deep synth bass, booming drums, and choirs chanting in Latin, are combined with classic Vampire Weekend joyfulness and spry humor, resulting in an album that expands the band’s sonic and intellectual palette into surprising new realms.