Song · Vampire Weekend
“Ya Hey” by Vampire Weekend
From the album Modern Vampires of the City (2013)
“Ya Hey” by Vampire Weekend appears on 7 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 2013 and 2026. It was first released in 2013 on the album Modern Vampires of the City. Its best result is #10 on the WXPN Year in Review: Top 200 Songs of 2013. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #42 indie & aaa song of 2013 and #2,571 indie & aaa song of all time.
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"Ya Hey" arrived in May 2013 as the second single from Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend's third album, and it finds Ezra Koenig striking a boldly blasphemous pose while the song skips along like a schoolyard chant. Koenig wrote it with Rostam and Ariel Rechtshaid, who produced it together, and Rich Costey mixed a swirl of drums, bass, mournful piano, a shrill vocoder and gospel-style chanting into something that sounds weightless and heavy at once.
Critics fell hard. Pitchfork named it Best New Track, with Ian Cohen hearing childish innocence and poetic confidence in the same breath, and Drowned in Sound's Robert Leedham praised how directly Koenig came at it this time, trading the band's old trail of oblique references for plain speaking. XL Recordings released it alongside a lyric video.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 17 | WFUV New York, NY | WFUV Top 90 Songs of 2013 | 90 |
| 2013 | 10 | WXPN Philadelphia, PA | WXPN Year in Review: Top 200 Songs of 2013 | 200 |
| 2013 | 31 | The Current Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN | The Current Top 89 Songs of 2013 | 89 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 250 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Colorado Sound Songs of All Time | 1055 |
| 2024 | 805 | WXPN | WXPN The 885 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century (2024) | 885 |
| 2025 | 653 | The Current | 893 Essential Songs of The Current: 2005 to Now | 893 |
| 2026 | 860 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Songs You Discovered on The Colorado Sound | 1055 |
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