MGMT is a duo formed by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden during their freshman year at Wesleyan University. They originally made music under the moniker of LCD Soundsystem, but changed it later on because the name is already used by another band.

Before being signed to Columbia Records in 2006, they worked as an indie act, releasing two mixtapes "We (Don't) Care" in 2004 and "Climbing to New Low" in the next year. They also toured with Of Montreal for their opening act.

"Oracular Spectacular" is the group's first major-label release which was out for purchase a year after scoring a deal with Columbia Records. The album was preceded by the release of a mini album called "Time to Pretend [EP]". The most successful single from the 2007 effort is a song called "Kids" which climbed to No. 9 on Billboard Modern Rock Songs chart.

Three years after dropping their debut album, MGMT came out with another album called "Congratulations". Filled with nine new songs, it debuted at No. 2 on the U.S. albums chart, becoming their highest chart performance. This band originally planned not to release any single from the record, reasoning "We'd rather people hear the whole album as an album and see what tracks jump out rather than the ones that get played on the radio," Ben said in an interview.

"If anything gets played on the radio," he continued. "We've been talking about ways to make sure people hear the album as an album in order and not just figure out what are the best three tracks, download those and not listen to the rest of it."

However, they changed the plan and released three singles, "It's Working", "Flash Delirium" and "Siberian Breaks". One of them was offered as free download. They even wanted to put out the whole album as free purchase but "that didn't make sense to anyone."