Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij announced yesterday that he would be leaving the band effective immediately. In an Instagram post, frontman Ezra Koenig addressed the change and offering an update on the band’s follow up to Modern Vampires of the City.

“For now in the Vampire Weekend universe, it’s all about recording the next album,” Koenig said in a lengthy statement that offered positive remarks about Batmanglij along with his

In related news, Vampire Weekend will perform at a Bernie Sanders rally at the University of Iowa Field House this Saturday. On Twitter, Koenig said that the lineup will be him, Chris Thompson and Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth as well as the University of Iowa Hawkapellas group.

Read Koenig’s thoughts below.

A couple years ago, Rostam and I sat down at his house & talked abt whether our collaboration was dependent on being members of the same band. We both firmly agreed that nope, it was not. In fact, we agreed that our collaboration was more important.

_I’m psyched about the work we’ve already begun for LP4 and I’m psyched to hear anything else Rostam is a part of. _

Also very excited to continue playing music with CT and Baio but there will be plenty of time to talk about that later in the year.