When he was a member of the art-rock quartet, Vampire Weekend, Rostam Batmanglij was a major driving force behind the band as he was a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, composer and producer of much of their material. The group (featuring bass guitarist Chris Baio, drummer Chris Tomson and guitarist, songwriter and lead vocalist Ezra Koenig) were together since their college days at Columbia University and released three critically-acclaimed albums with their third, "Modern Vampires of the City" winning them a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 2014.
During his time with the band, Batmanglij teamed with Wes Miles of the indie rock band, Ra Ra Riot in 2006 for a side project called Discovery that explored electronic and alt-r&b sounds but after Vampire Weekend's last release, he began to further experiment musically. Batmanglij did some work for a film, teaming up with Charli XCX and Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran on a song for the soundtrack of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1", writing original music for a play by Kenneth Lonergan called "This Is Our Youth" in 2014, writing and producing tracks for Carly Rae Jepsen's well-received 2015 album, "E•MO•TION", producing the Frank Ocean's track, "Ivy" from his follow-up 2016 album, "Blonde" and worked on songs for recent releases from Haim and Solange.
