Vampire Weekend + Ra Ra Riot = Discovery

Fans of bookish, polo-shirt'd, sea-breezed Ivy League indie-pop, get ready to get your party on. Or, um, something like that. It's time to discover Discovery. That's the side project of Vampire Weekend's keyboardist/arranger/producer type, Rostam Batmanglij, and Ra Ra Riot frontman Wes Miles. Where their main bands --whose respective debut discs, Vampire Weekend and The Rhumb Line, were two of 2008's best albums-- play preppy, jangling, twee tunes, Discovery do something distinctly different.

Taking inspiration from the chromed-out gleam of modern R&B production, Batmanglij takes charge of sinuous keyboards, boinging beats, and massive synth crashes; approximating disposable pop fodder with an expert ear. Miles --who normally spends his lyrical time making bibliophilic connections to e.e. cummings and Virginia Woolf-- sings simple refrains in a near-falsetto that's pitched even higher by the obligatory autotune. It's brightly-colored, saturated-sounding, fluttery electro fluff that's stylistic lightyears away from Upper West Side Soweto.

At the moment, all the Discovery you can hear is on the Discovery MySpace page, but, come July 7, there'll be a whole debut LP waiting to please your ears. Due for release on VW's home imprint, XL Recordings, the album promises vocal cameos from Vampire Weekend homie Ezra Koenig and Angel Deradoorian of Dirty Projectors, and, um, a cover of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," apparently. Oh, baby, give me one more chance, etc.

Discovery Track List:
1. "Orange Shirt"
2. "Osaka Loop Line"
3. "Can You Discover?"
4. "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" (feat. Angel Deradoorian of Dirty Projectors)
5. "So Insane"
6. "Swing Tree"
7. "Carby" (feat. Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend)
8. "I Want You Back"
9. "It's Not My Fault (It's My Fault)"
10. "Slang Tang"