Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	69 (8 reviews)
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Consequence of Sound	C–
Paste	(favorable)
Robert Christgau	(B+)
NME

Nanobots is the 12th studio album from Brooklyn-based alternative rock group They Might Be Giants. Uncharacteristically for the band, the album's title comes from an album track, as the second track shares a title with the album. The album was released on March 5, 2013 on Idlewild Recordings — the band's independent imprint — with Megaforce Records in the US. The album was also separately released on March 8 in Australia through Breakaway Records and on March 11 in Europe, through Lojinx. One week before its physical release, Nanobots was released digitally for streaming in its entirety through the band's SoundCloud, announced by Rolling Stone. Prior to this, "Call You Mom", "Black Ops" and "Lost My Mind" were released through the advance digital Nanobots EP in January 2013. The EP, released through Amazon.com and iTunes, was met with fairly positive responses.

The album, which contains 25 tracks and runs approximately 45 minutes, was recorded in Manhattan and produced by Patrick Dillett. The relatively short run time is accounted for by the fact that the album includes many of what band member John Flansburgh describes as "extremely short songs". Flansburgh adds that "...the songs kind of stand alone. When you listen to the album alone, it has this manic pacing to it with the short songs. It makes for a different kind of listening experience."John Linnell commented that these songs were naturally written as short songs to avoid over-populating them with unnecessary verses and choruses. This distinguishes them from the "Fingertips" suite of songs under one minute long on Apollo 18, as those songs were written specifically with brevity in mind, and were described by Linnell as having been "hyper-arranged".

Artwork for Nanobots was designed by Paul Sahre, using collages by artist Sam Weber. Throughout the album artwork, four of Weber's collages are used: Ingres, Hansel, Jester(clown), and Blue Beard 2. The same style was used for the promotional Nanobots EP. The collages were described by Christopher R. Weingarten for Spin as "Max-Ernst-gone-Saw".

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Wikipedia