When Mayday Parade -- a nice little pop/punk act from Tallahassee, Florida -- decided to make a video for "Kids in Love," the second single from their Anywhere But Here album, they wanted something that "pushed the boundaries." But in their wildest dreams, they never thought they'd end up with something like this.

Ever since its premiere earlier this month, the "Kids" clip -- three-plus minutes of sex, drugs, violence, nudity and even more drugs -- has been banned from YouTube, angered a portion of Mayday's fanbase and somehow become a rather unexpected phenomenon. And it's all the guys in the band can do to hold on while all of this unfurls around them.

"When we first started thinking about the video, we knew what we didn't want to do, because we've done the video where we're just playing somewhere, and, to be honest, a lot of other bands have done that too," frontman Derek Sanders told MTV News. "So when we were approached by [director Josh Mond] and saw the idea he had, we knew it was a risk, but we wanted to do it. And then, when we saw the first cut of the video, we were like, 'Wow, that was extreme.' "

Almost an updated take on Larry Clark's 1995 film "Kids," the video follows four, uh, kids on a rather debauched road trip, on which they drop acid in Las Vegas, drink a whole lot of alcohol, shed their clothing on the regular, smack each other around and engage in copious amounts of sex. To be honest, it's sorta smutty, but -- unlike Clark's flick -- it never really feels exploitive, managing instead to capture the invincible, unbridled energy of youth. Which was sort of what the guys in Mayday wanted in the first place.

"The feel of it was exactly right, for me, because that song was written about the summer that I turned 17, when I was going down to St. Pete to see this girl down there, and doing all the stuff that kids do," Sanders said. "I mean, it's not as extreme as the stuff in the video, but it was definitely in that whole spirit of being young and invincible."

Try telling that to some of Mayday's fans, who freaked out as soon as the video premiered, calling the video "embarrassing" and "pointlessly explicit" and claiming that, thanks to all the drugs and nudity, it had made them "lose respect" for the band. Sanders admitted that the reaction took him and his bandmates by surprise, but he realizes that it was the price they had to pay for pushing the envelope.

"The negative reaction, it bothers me. I hate to see people say they've lost respect for us or that they're no longer going to be fans of our band, but luckily, that's just one extreme of all the feedback we got," he said. "A lot of our fans also loved it. But I understand why some people were upset. We're not saying the things in the video are good, not by any means. And I do agree I wouldn't want my 13-year-old cousin to see it."

But at the moment, that's probably not an issue, since Sanders' 13-year-old cousin probably can't even find the "Kids" video. After originally appearing on YouTube, it was eventually yanked off the site (hey, kind of like [article id="1637991"]M.I.A.'s "Born Free"[/article]). After some time in limbo (it's not even on the band's website), it now exists on sites like sites like DailyMotion.com, which requires users to sign in to verify they're 18 or older. Sanders said the plan is to re-edit the clip so it can actually be shown on places like MTV. And, to be honest, he admits things could have been a whole lot worse. They could've released the first version of the video.

"We actually had them take out some things. There was, like, full nudity through the whole thing, so we had them take out a lot of that," Sanders laughed. "I mean, it was almost too much even for me."

Did Mayday Parade go overboard with their video? Let us know in the comments!