Yes, I know, everyone has heard "Kids"--or at least everyone who was alive in 2009ish and spent any time near a radio at all. But I think far fewer people have heard the original version of this song on the 2005 Time to Pretend EP? I actually accidentally got this CD when I was trying to get their debut album but this was all the Suncoast at the mall had. And then I was like 'why are all the songs on the radio different??'
But right, so... It's obvious to me why MGMT got popular: they have a few really killer hooks, and the production is extremely crisp and calculated, a constellation of looping synths that keep jamming the melody in your ear. This version of one of their most popular songs is... not that! Okay, yes, it still has that one killer hook, but all of the synths surrounding it sound far murkier, like a swamp where each element is trying to swallow up the rest (including the very mushy vocals). The whole thing is just all slightly off in various ways: The whole song sounds sliiightly a step slower, the instrumentation sounds closer to a MIDI, there's additional flourishes like the ringing through one chorus that distract as much as they add, the horns coming in after the synth solo mid-song are more jarringly out of place. And yet... right after those horns...
"Kids" as a song is great because it's sort of like a dream, but the version that got big on the radio is a dream that's being depicted in a book or a movie: every element has been chosen by an author to build to a cohesive whole. Maybe it originated in some dream in someone's head, but it's been sharpened since then, smoothed out into something conventionally enjoyable. OTOH, this original version of "Kids" is like an actual dream: it's a little uncomfortable! It keeps repeating itself but every loop feels like it's on the edge of breaking, of abruptly shifting into something that could be terrifying, or weird, or... Or what it actually does!! At a crucial moment, the key changes and the sun comes out from behind the clouds in triumph for a long instrumental section. That whole part got stripped out entirely in the popular version--and I understand why it did, too, but... I think it loses something important in the process.
At least to me, this is the definitive version of the song, specifically because of all of its ostensible flaws and oddities. (TBH my desire for something with rougher edges is probably why I really liked the Time to Pretend EP and then didn't care much about later stuff by MGMT, lol)