Lopatin and Ford (who had made electronic music together since their school days) produced That We Can Play in an apartment studio, using vintage synthesizers and sequencers to recapture the sound and style of 1980s power pop.

[1] For a time they had separate careers, with Ford moving to New York City to play in soft-rock group Tigercity and Lopatin remaining in Boston to produce and compose music as Oneohtrix Point Never.

"[2] "Strawberry Skies" is followed by "MIDI Drift", which features an Italo bass line, "pitch-bent keytar" and "square wave synths",[4] and was compared by Michael Brodeur of The Boston Globe to the music of Ratatat.

[6] The third track, "Planet Party", called "Apple IIe funk" by Joe Colly of Pitchfork Media,[5] contains "wailing guitar synths", "fist-pumping bass", "scattergun freestyle drums" and "sudden, surprisingly violent orchestral stabs".

[4] Produced in the summer of 2010 and the first song to be chosen for inclusion on That We Can Play, Ford recalled, "We were making this smooth-rock, Alan Parsons Project-style shit, and then it completely got sliced and diced, mistakes happened in Pro Tools, and it became something else.

"[3] "Shadows in Bloom", a reprise of Secret Service's "Flash in the Night", is a melancholy, mid-tempo power ballad featuring bass, snare and synth harmonies described by a reviewer as violent, cavernous, and harsh.

[9] On December 14, a remix of "Strawberry Skies" by electronic musician Hudson Mohawke (not included on the EP) became available for download on Fact's website; according to the magazine, it "manages to be totally malevolent while also sounding like an amazing street party, which is quite an achievement".

A video for "Planet Party" was released on Delicious Scopitone in August 2010, which Larry Fitzmaurice of Pitchfork Media described as "a stutteringly smooth, been-around-for-a-few-minutes" production with "jet skis, killer whales, water slides, wind surfing, track racing, and tape-warped women".

[5] That We Can Play was ranked eighth on Gorilla vs. Bear's list of the top 30 albums of 2010; according to Chris Cantalini, "The run time here is slight, but the EP's brevity works in its favor, as there's not a wasted second on this thing.