Oh come on. Prove that they aren't original instead (I like them, so I would love to hear similar music
). When I heard Cape Cod Kwass Kwassa for the first time, I hadn't heard anything like it before. It's not just the african influences it's something more... Something about the way the riff completely stops every two bars... I don't know. It was unique to me.
And I think they changed their sound in a big way from Vampire Weekend to Contra. On Vampire Weekend it all sounded... organic and perhaps even a bit archaic... And the fact that they seemingly saw African music as archaic is of course a bit problematic... But on Contra, the influences are much more from South Africa, and the sound is much more electronic, it sounds like they've heard a lot of Timbaland and Neptunes in places. I just don't understand people who say they didn't develop between albums.