Vampire Weekend — seen here performing at Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in 2014 — is back with two new songs (Jason Merritt)

New York (AFP) – Vampire Weekend, the New York indie rock band that found global acclaim for its buoyant style and world music influences, on Thursday released its first new songs in nearly six years.

The group that originally formed at Columbia University said the two new singles are part of their highly anticipated fourth album titled “Father of the Bride.”

Frontman Ezra Koenig said the forthcoming album would include 18 songs — the band would drop two tracks per month for three months, beginning Thursday, and then release the full album.

The first new song, “Harmony Hall,” is typical of the band’s arty pop style but with an infusion of folk and a Grateful Dead-esque guitar solo.

Koenig said the more stripped-back “2021” samples Japanese music icon Haruomi Hosono, using music the electro pioneer composed to be played in Muji housing goods stores in the 1980s.

“I know that 5-6 years is considered a long time between records,” Koenig wrote to fans anxious for the album Vampire Weekend said they’ve been working on for several years.

“Personally, I think it’s a dignified pace befitting a band that’s already placed three albums in stores,” he wrote on Instagram.

“But everyone has their own sense of time.”

The band’s last studio album, “Modern Vampires of the City,” was released in May 2013.

In August, Vampire Weekend played their first full show in four years at Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival.

The performance followed two brief appearances in 2016 to campaign for leftist Senator Bernie Sanders, who was then running for president.

The album will be the first since the amicable departure of keyboardist and co-songwriter Rostam Batmanglij, who Koenig said did contribute to parts of the new album.

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