Animal Collective is an experimental psychedelic band originally from Baltimore, Maryland, currently based in New York City and Lisbon. Animal Collective consists of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Deakin (Josh Dibb), and Geologist (Brian Weitz). Records released under the name Animal Collective may include contributions from any or all of these members; the lineup is not uniform. The band members met in school and started recording together in various forms of collaboration from a young age. The group also runs the record label Paw Tracks on which they have released their own material as well as that of other artists.

Animal Collective grew out of childhood friendships in Baltimore County. Noah Lennox and Josh Dibb met in the second grade at the Park School of Baltimore and became good friends. Lennox went away to a Waldorf high school in Pennsylvania, while Dibb attended The Park School of Baltimore, that David Portner attended since grade school. Brian Weitz moved from Philadelphia to Baltimore County in 1993, attended the same school and became friends with Portner. According to Lennox, they attended "progressive" schools that emphasized creativity, imagination and artistic self-expression as part of "a complete kind of education". Weitz and Portner started playing music together when they were 15 because of their shared love of the band Pavement and horror movies. Their musical range included cover songs by Pavement and The Cure as well as the songs "Poison" by Bell Biv DeVoe and "Seasons In The Sun" by Terry Jacks. When both met Dibb later in High School, they started an indie rock band called Automine with schoolmates Brendan Fowler (a.k.a. BARR) and David Shpritz, being the only ones they knew who wrote own songs. We [once] set up a show with four bandsbands that were different formations of us, Portner remembered in an Interview with Baltimore City Paper . At that time, the group did not have any contact to the music scene in Baltimore and "was more about the back porch. They are not considered as real music."