Little Dark Age (abbreviated as LDA[7]) is the fourth studio album by the American rock band MGMT, released on February 9, 2018, through Columbia Records.

When MGMT concluded touring at the end of 2014, Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser decided to take a short break from music and focus on their personal lives.

They initially decided to abandon the loose and improvisational writing style they employed on Congratulations (2010) and MGMT (2013) and revert to the creative method used with Oracular Spectacular (2007), where each member would come to their songwriting sessions with fully formed ideas.

The band has credited Wimberly with acting as an enabler for them, getting them excited when they had good ideas and encouraging them to go down the paths that he saw as promising.

The song features VanWyngarden singing beneath his usual vocal range, which he prescribed to the fact that he had "spent hours screaming at the top of my lungs about Pakistan."

They opened their writing process up to others for the first time, with Goldwasser and VanWyngarden together having written the entirety of MGMT's original songs up to that point.

MGMT hosted a two-week jam session, with various players stopping by and laying down tracks, and then edited and sorted through the recordings later.

These sessions included drummer Josh Da Costa and James Richardson, a longtime member of the MGMT live band.

Goldwasser described this breakthrough as a rediscovering of the "playfulness" and speed at which they wrote songs in the band's early days as students at Wesleyan University.

It originally appeared in 1988 on the front cover of the first issue of Witness to the Bizarre, a literary horror and supernatural zine edited by Melinda Jaeb.

"[16] The album's gatefold features one side of a double-sided drawing titled Nénuphars/Paix Christi (English: Water lilies/Peace Christ) by Swiss artist Aloïse Corbaz.

[2][17][18][19] The band has explained that Little Dark Age is both an expression of surprise and dismay to the current political and social climate—particularly the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States—with an occasional reference to their own personal lives.

[21] On May 8, 2017, the band released a teaser video on Instagram alongside the title of the forthcoming album as Little Dark Age, following a series of cryptic tweets the week prior.

[37] Terence Cawley of The Boston Globe expressed a similar view, asserting that the album was "both hooky and eccentric enough to please MGMT fans of all stripes.

"[43] Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press gave a positive review, stating that "MGMT have once more delivered an off-kilter, challenging and very addictive album.

"[44] Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan said, "MGMT are back to their roots on Little Dark Age, with concise tunes built from cushy keyboard beats and cute, kiting melodies.

"[41] Spin's Austin Brown called the album "easygoing but frustrating", saying, "Little Dark Age is pleasant enough, but it's hard to look past a glaring dearth of ideas.