Dr. Dog, the Wonder Years, and all the other acts to see at Philly Music Fest

Philly Music Fest takes over the city’s music scene for seven nights starting Monday in the ninth iteration of the fall tradition that celebrates local indie music culture and raises money for music education.

This year’s version of the fest, founded by attorney and self-described music nerd Greg Seltzer in 2017, will get going with two nights of Dr. Dog, one of the Philly music’s defining bands of the century, which is finally making its PMF debut. It then continues with a total of 22 acts playing in six venues over seven nights.

Along with the music on stage, there will be behind-the-scenes networking going on at Inside Hustle, the PMF event designed to give musicians and aspiring music business professionals the opportunity to pick the brains of established insiders.

Bruce Warren of WXPN-FM (88.5) will moderate “The Musician Hustle” panel, and many managers, musicians, publicists, and other industry types will be on hand to offer advice at REC Philly on Oct. 18 at noon.

Tickets are available via PhillyMusicFest.com or through each individual venue’s website. Some shows are sold out or have waiting lists. Among the nonprofit music education organizations the PMF supports are Rock to the Future, Settlement Music School, Musicopia, and Beyond the Bars.

Here’s all the music happening at the PMF.

Since announcing in 2021 that its members were giving up touring after 15 years on the road, Dr. Dog has been strategic about its concert itinerary, playing only a handful of shows a year.

In 2024, the band named its 11th album Dr. Dog and played only two Philadelphia-area gigs: a headline date at the Mann Center and a warm-up show in Wilmington.

» READ MORE: Dr. Dog swore off touring in 2021, but is making an exception for a date at the Mann

This year, the Scott McMicken- and Toby Leaman-led band checked playing at the hometown baseball stadium off its list, opening for the Lumineers at Citizens Bank Park. It’s now following that with the two intimate dates in Ardmore.

They will be full-length, two-hours-ish Dr. Dog shows rather than abbreviated festival sets, with singer-guitarist Pat Finnerty, who also joins DD for part of its show, as the opening act.

Greg Mendez is a Philly singer-songwriter whose subtle, sensitive acoustic guitar-based music might just break your heart. After years on the scene, the RIYL Alex G and Nick Drake artist broke out with a self-titled 2023 album. His last year’s First Time / Alone was written in his West Philly apartment while recuperating from wrist surgery.

A well-matched opener is 22° Halo, who is Philly songwriter Will Kennedy, who also made brittle, beautiful music on last year’s Lily of the Valley. Another is the considerably louder, but similarly moody, Emma Kazal-fronted Soup Dreams, that just released its full-length Hellbender.

Mt. Joy’s Matt Quinn was welcomed into the Philly Specials Eagles Christmas album family when he joined Jason Kelce on “Santa Drives an Astrovan” last year.

For this show — originally scheduled at World Cafe Live but moved after that West Philly venue became embroiled in labor strife — Quinn will be backed by a band music directed by Philly Specials producer Charlie Hall, featuring a number of guests, including Philly soul and R&B band Snacktime and Grace Gardner, who is among the openers at Underground Arts. Surprise cameos by other Philly luminaries are expected.

Also worth checking out are R&B and funk artist Kayla Childs, who performs as Black Buttafly, and Archawah, the pop-rock singer Chris Archibald, who is the leader of Bucks County band Illinois and wrote the theme song to the Shane Gillis-starring Netflix show Tires.

Seltzer and his wife, Jen, who cofounded the festival with him, have scored another long-awaited get in the Wonder Years, the long-running Dan Campbell-fronted emo band, which is also playing the PMF for the first time.

On Friday, the Lansdale quintet will be joined by South Jersey indie band Dryjacket, the Russell Edling-led experimental pop band Golden Apples whose new Shooting Star is out on Philly’s Lame-O label, and Jersey songwriter Public Works. The Will Yip-produced alt-rock band Caracara and the Abi Natesh-led “Carnatic rock” trio Kulfi Girls plays Saturday.

The intimate Fallser Club in East Falls enters the PMF universe this year. The bill will be headlined by Turner, the Bucks County singer who auditioned for America’s Got Talent when she was 11 and made a deep run on American Idol in 2018. She’ll be joined by Roots Picnic veteran Chioke and Planette Automatic, the art-rock band led by poet songwriter KR Hackett.

“Our genre is Philly,” PMF proudly proclaims. But until now, the fest hasn’t made room for one music genre in particular: metal. That changes with this triple bill. Headliners are the Philly death metal quartet Horrendous, which hopefully won’t live up to its name. Joining the band are “post-black” metal screamo band Lástima, which explores “themes of Latino-identity depression and existentialism,” and ShyGodwin, the Black punk and hard core duo of Lee Woods and Jasmine Godwin.

At its closing night jazz show, the PMF and the Ars Nova Workshop give the drummers some. Nazir Ebo, the younger brother of jazz drummer Justin Faulkner, and a rising star who WRTI-FM (90.1) called “the Philly jazz scene’s next breakthrough talent,” will headline with a five-piece band. And Daniel Villarreal, the Panama-born drummer who recently moved to Philly from Chicago, opens for a trio that includes bassist John Moran and Brazilian percussionist Victor Vieira-Branco.