Vampire Weekend's popularity in the Boston area makes sense. As the metropolitan area with the highest percentage of college students in the country, the New York-based indie-pop quartet strikes a particularly strong chord here with songs like "Campus" and "Oxford Comma," lamenting the importance of grammatical techniques in essay writing. Thus, Vampire Weekend's performance on Sunday, Sept. 12 drew a full house to Boston's Bank of America Pavilion.Although the band is now a mainstay of college and indie music, its repertoire consists of only two full-length albums: its self-titled 2008 debut and Contra, released in January. Thus, the fans at Sunday's show were treated to an eclectic sampling of tunes spanning the group's brief history.

Vampire Weekend took the stage to DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win." Then, vocalist Ezra Koenig, multi-instrumentalist Rotsam Batmanglij, drummer Chris Tomson and bassist Chris Baio opened with "Holiday," a peppy, boppy cut from Contra, highlighting Koenig's falsetto, while Tomson's steady, building drums backed the bouncy number. Lyrics about going away for a summer's day highlighted the dichotomy between the band's sunny sound and the chilly, grey and dreary evening. However, the cool breezes blowing through the open-air pavilion couldn't stop the crowd from temporarily suspending the weather conditions to travel into the bright, cheerful world of Vampire Weekend.

Soon, the band moved into songs from its first album, including "I Stand Corrected," one of the few tracks from the debut that are not entirely fast-paced and poppy. Rather, "I Stand Corrected" started slowly, featuring only Koenig's vocals, the stage awash in red, glowing lights. His bandmates soon joined behind him, as Baio's drums built throughout with the tempo progressing until the chorus. The chandeliers dangling above the stage flashed alternating neon lights as Vampire Weekend began "M79," and Koenig encouraged the audience to sing along. Another sing-along came later on with the peculiar "Blake's Got A New Face," which featured the audience straining to match the top pitches of Koenig's falsetto riff.

The uniqueness of Koenig's vocal range stood out again on "California English," in which his voice was made both higher and faster thanks to auto-tune. Another surprise came during the band's emotive, synth-driven cover of "I'm Goin' Down" by Bruce Springsteen. Koenig's voice was higher than The Boss' on the original and lacked Springsteen's definitive twang. Instead, Vampire Weekend crafted "I'm Goin' Down" into a more sensitive, poppy number, more fitting with its own style. Batmanglij's keys and the slowed-down tempo made the song stand out. Instead of becoming just an imitation of the original, the band put in their own twist, making it their own while still honoring the song's identity.

Next came "Diplomat's Son," featuring recorded repetitive, funky chants backed by a dub-step synthesizer sound, expanding and shrinking in a longer span than the band's usual short and sweet cuts. The backing percussion added to the calypso style of the tune, fitting the set's summery feel.

The performance's opening acts, on the other hand, seemed more in tune with the chilly, dark evening than the sunny, glowing aura surrounding Vampire Weekend's performance. Baltimore-based duo Beach House played a 45-minute set of dreamy, dark electro-pop. On "Norway," the ethereal tone of singer Victoria Legrand's milky yet scratchy vocals combined with the lights shimmering on the stage like stars in a dark sky created the feeling of a dream world. The duo began to wake from its sleepy state on "Used To Be," employing the synthesizer and keys to create a boppy, almost childlike sound.

Dum Dum Girls, an all-female noise-pop quartet from Los Angeles, preceded Beach House. Each member of the band was dressed entirely in leather and lace, fitting with the band's icy, foreboding electronic sound. Vocalist Dee Dee Penny yodeled over the sound of her fellow band members moaning, mixing to sound like an a cappella synthesizer. On "Jail La La," Penny finally left the three low notes among which she had been alternating to expand her range on the drum-centered tune.

Still, the differing styles of the three bands could not detract from the distinctly Vampire Weekend-based identity of the show. Neither the slower, dreamier sounds of the opening acts nor the clearly autumnal weather conditions could challenge Vampire Weekend's insistence on one last night of summery music.