Car fanatics were none-too-thrilled with the lyric video for Vampire Weekend’s “Diane Young” and its Saab-arson visuals. As per autoblog Jalopnik, in a post called “Vampire Weekend Are A Bunch Of Dicks,” the clip struck a nerve with the towing company that supplied the vehicles:

Ready for a Saab story? These two cars will be lit on fire in a music video on Saturday. The previous owners I picked them up from were telling me all of the nice times they had in them and to make sure to take care of them. Little do they know they will be charcoal in 2 days. Both said they wanted to see the finished video. It was hard to keep a straight face while they proclaimed their love for these Junkers.

We would have paid the whole thing no mind if Ezra Koening hadn’t spoken out about the little to-do in an interview that was published by Spinner earlier today:

“I want people to understand that we do respect cars and the last thing we want to do is to fuck up a collector’s item or something like that,” Vampire Weekend singer Ezra Koenig tells Spinner. “Hopefully people believe me when I say that our record label was looking to purchase the cheapest, oldest cars possible; they weren’t trying to buy a beautiful perfect condition car.”

In fact, Koenig claims, his songwriting partner and group multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij has a special affinity for the now-bankrupt Swedish automaker.

“Rostam especially loves Saabs,” Koenig claims. “When he grew up his family drove a Saab.”

Will Koening’s words squash the beef between the Vamps and the Autoheads? Is this year that New York City’s marquee indie bans strike out against sports cars? On “Welcome To Japan” from the Strokes’ just-released album Comedown Machine, Julian Casablancas sings, “What kind of asshole drives a Lotus?” as Michael was quick to point out when this controversy arose. Let’s take bets on what’s next. Animal Collective against Audis? Grizzly Bear vs. BMW?