Koenig was born in New York City, and is the son of Bobby Bass, a psychotherapist, and Robin Koenig, a set dresser on film and TV productions. His parents lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan before moving to Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He is Jewish, and his family came to the U.S. from Europe (including Romania and Hungary). He grew up in Northern New Jersey and attended Glen Ridge High School.

In 2005, Ezra formed the alternative rock band Vampire Weekend. The name of the group was in reference to an unreleased indie film of the same name that Ezra and his friends produced during a vacation. In the film, Ezra portrayed protagonist, Walcott, a man hell-bent on escaping Cape Cod as he believed vampires were coming. Many songs from the bands eponymous release made reference to the film.  Ezra met his bandmates at Columbia University, prior to 2003. After already having met drummer, Chris Tomson, Koenig became aquatinted with Rostam Batmanglij. The two immediately bonded over Radiohead at a party during freshman year and vowed to start a band one day. Rounding out the group was Chris Baio, Koenig's suite-mate in his sophomore year, and they shared a love of Destiny's Child. The group immediately got to work, playing their first show in 2006 at a battle of the bands in a campus basement. They placed third out of four. Later that year, some of their demos appeared online, earning raves from sites like Stereogum and Pitchfork. Before they knew it, they were selling out shows and appearing on the cover of Spin without even having released an album.  Their eponymous debut album arrived in January 2008, and by the end of the year they had performed on Saturday Night Live, played for 40,000 fans at England's Glastonbury festival and sold nearly half a million albums. The album was self-produced whilst they were working full-time jobs. Since then, the band have released two additional albums, Contra and Modern Vampires of the City.  The band has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards. In 2011, Contra was nominated for Best Alternative Album, however the band lost to The Black Keys. In 2014, Modern Vampires of the City won the Grammy award for Best Alternative Album. Following the win, Koenig exclaimed, "I'm the pre-eminent Ezra of my time, and when I die, then we can talk about who comes next."  Following the departure of Batmanglij in 2016, Koenig is currently working on the band's fourth studio album, set for release in 2018.

did they win any other awards ?
The band has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards.