One way to think of a shape-shifting group like Animal Collective is that they’re a different band with each album. Sometimes that’s true in a literal sense, considering that Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox, David “Avey Tare” Portner, and Brian “Geologist” Weitz recorded without Josh “Deakin” Dibb on both 2009’s luminously definitive Merriweather Post Pavilion and on last year’s busily candy-coated Painting With. But one of the more intriguing observations from the Painting With press cycle was that Animal Collective had themselves toyed with switching band names, only to be dissuaded by practical concerns, like listeners being able to find their music.

It seems fitting that a previously suggested alternate name, the Painters, resurfaced during the demo process for Painting With. Like its predecessor, 2012’s Centipede Hz, the last record is dense and ornamented with samples, but it’s also brightly colored, synthetic, and dizzyingly hyperactive. After each Animal Collective album, the group has typically issued a related follow-up EP, including career highlights like 2005’s Prospect Hummer and 2009’s Fall Be Kind. The companion to Painting With is the four-song The Painters EP, and the records share a sensibility.

For however much Animal Collective have changed between each album, a juxtaposition between campfire primitivism and electronic experimentation has remained a near-constant. Painting With seemed to ball that up like never before into skewed, breakneck-paced pop miniatures. Generally speaking, more recent Animal Collective songs bang you on the head, lyrically and sonically, in a way the band didn’t previously, but they don’t necessarily get stuck in your head in the same way as a “My Girls,” either. The Painters EP was mostly recorded around the same time as its companion album, and while it’s a reasonably compelling elaboration on its predecessor’s synth-splattering aesthetic, it’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind about this version of the group’s sound.

The opener and first single, “Kinda Bonkers,” resembles “FloriDada,” its counterpart from the last album: Both songs overcome their playful if obvious titles; both find Panda Bear and Avey Tare trading vocals in such a way that they’re almost finishing each other’s sentences; and both convey a utopian faith in transcending human differences. “Kinda Bonkers” distinguishes itself, though, partly because its odd burbles and tribal pulse are at a statelier tempo. And where “FloriDada” plays its vision of “a future/connected by sutures” into wry “where’s the bridge” puns, “Kinda Bonkers” resolves into a communal mantra: “Unity of all kind, unity of all kind.”

The middle of the EP passes pleasantly but less arrestingly. “Peacemaker” is more relaxed than almost anything on Painting With, and here the vocal exchanges tend to happen at the level of syllables, not half-sentences. At high volume in headphones, it offers enough squiggly nuances to hold interest, underpinned by glassy synth and a lurching rhythmic base. On the bouncier “Goalkeeper,” what precisely is being sung about this soccer savior gets largely buried in thuds and squelches.

Painters’ most notable inclusion is a cover of Martha & the Vandellas’ mid-’60s classic “Jimmy Mack,” done the Painters’ way: delirious, yawpy, and belching with synth. As anyone familiar with the original song might hope, it’s ecstatic with yearning, and it’s no surprise Animal Collective made a habit of working this into their 2016 tour stops. But the song doesn’t lend itself to their current manic style, and it’s hard to imagine choosing this take over the Vandellas—or any other version.

If hearing Animal Collective do “Jimmy Mack” tells us anything, it's that writing a great song, like painting a modern-day masterpiece, is difficult. Animal Collective have done it before, and they’ll hopefully do it again. Odds are, they’ll be a different band then, and, as a wide-eyed Painters EP narrator might point out, their listeners will be different, too.