When Vampire Weekend played the Great Escape Festival in Brighton last week, frontman Ezra Koenig didn't take too kindly to the yells of 'Graceland, Graceland!' coming from the floor.

The chants were a reference to the parallels being drawn between his fast-rising New York guitar band and Paul Simon's classic, genre-busting 1986 album.

But while singer and guitarist Ezra was initially unimpressed by the hecklers, his suspicions were allayed after an après-gig chin-wag with the fans in question.

'I thought they were having a go at us,' admits the 23-year-old. 'But they actually meant the Graceland stuff as a compliment - and they thought we'd love it, too.

Rhymin' Simon? No, it's Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend

'Well, I think Paul Simon is a great songwriter - and Graceland is a great album - but there are people who will use those kinds of comparison in a demeaning way.

'The idea of comparing a new band with a specific album from the past diminishes what we're trying to do. It's saying that we're not artists in our own right, that we're operating in a narrow area that's already been defined by someone else.'

The notion that Vampire Weekend are a limited outfit can be dismissed by even the most cursory listen to their self-titled debut album, released in January.

Refreshingly adventurous, it takes a batch of guitar-driven, three-minute pop songs and enriches them with African rhythms, baroque strings and an 18th-century harpsichord.

On tracks like Mansard Roof and new single Oxford Comma, the quartet come across like a fusion of early Talking Heads and fellow New Yorker guitar band The Strokes.

The links with Graceland, another album that mixed Western pop with world-beat, stem largely from Vampire Weekend's breezy, summery guitars, although there are times, too, when Koenig's voice - and his lyrics about New York City life - are eerily reminiscent of Rhymin' Simon.

Ezra met the other members of Vampire Weekend - keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij, bassist Chris Baio and drummer Christopher Tomson - while all four were students at Manhattan's Columbia University, one of America's prestigious Ivy League colleges

'We got our ideas from listening to lots of different types of music,' says Ezra.

'The African songs we liked used guitar, bass and drums, so it was easy to incorporate those sounds.

'We didn't want to be a typical band. We also listen to electronic music and rap, so traditional, bluesy rock didn't feel right for us.

'If people see us as a stepping stone to African music, that's great, but we're nottrying to teach people about it. Our songs are a hybrid.'

Koenig, whose surname offers a clue to his German ancestry, grew up in New Jersey.

His father, who works in the film industry, and mother, a family therapist, moved there from New York City when he was a child.

As he reached his teens, though, Ezra found his gaze turning back to Manhattan.

'When we relocated to the suburbs, my dad was torn by the move,' he says.

'A part of him wanted to stay in New York, and I grew up with the notion that the city was a special place. It was always a treat to go there. As I got older, I would travel over by myself or with friends.'

Ezra met the other members of Vampire Weekend - keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij, bassist Chris Baio and drummer Christopher Tomson - while all four were students at Manhattan's Columbia University, one of America's prestigious Ivy League colleges.

Taking their name from a horror film devised by English student Koenig, they began making music together only two years ago.

The band, who graduated in 2006, have since found it hard to shake off their academic tag.

With songs that tackle such scholarly topics as architecture, punctuation and their preferred Manhattan bus routes, that is hardly surprising.

The fact that they only played live at college parties for the first six months of their existence helped to reinforce their bookish image - but Ezra is unconcerned.

'We're honest about the fact that we wrote most of our songs while we were at college,' he says.

'We don't have a problem with that. Some people have the wrong idea about us, but the truth is that Columbia was as diverse as any other university.

'Some people think that we are nerds who spend all ourtime in the library. I've even heard that our songs are supposed to celebrate privilege and elitism. If you came to one of our gigs, it would soon be pretty obvious that we're not doing that.

'If you believed some people, you'd think our shows were staid affairs, with the fans just sitting there. But the gigs are really joyful and raucous, with lots of dancing and crowd-surfing. 'As for the lyrics, we try to approach subjects in a different way.

'Ultimately, most of the songs are about relationships,but you can still sing about girls without sounding too clichéd.'

Since signing to London-based label XL, who found them via their MySpace page, Vampire Weekend have wasted no time building up a following.

Their two UK tours to date have both sold out, while they are already pencilled in for a slew of summer festival appearances.

Alongside funky soul diva Santogold and psychedelic rock duo MGMT, the band have also been credited with rejuvenating the New York pop scene, although Ezra bristles at any suggestion of an eclectic movement to rival the emergence of punk in the Seventies or rap in the Eighties.

He is happy for Vampire Weekend to stand purely on the strength of their own songs.

'We have never really been part of a "scene",' he says.

'We got together up in Columbia, which isn't really a big place for bands or artists. We just did our own thing, while Santogold and MGMT were doing theirs.

Our paths crossed occasionally, but we didn't all grow up together.

'Everything is happening at the right time for us. Two years ago, we were still at college.

Since then, we've spent a year making an album, quite a long time for a new band.

'It's exciting to sell out a UK tour, but I don't feel as if we've come from nowhere. It's not an overnight thing.'

Vampire Weekend is out now on XL. The single, Oxford Comma, is out on Monday. The band are playing Glastonbury, T In The Park and the Reading and Leeds Festivals.