What is They Are Gutting A Body of Water? A West Philly band that’s all the rage.

Douglas Dulgarian sat in Woodlands Cemetery on a sunny West Philly afternoon, talking about why he loves Philadelphia, and Philadelphia music.

“People move here and slowly their music changes,” he said, wearing a throwback Sixers Allen Iverson jersey. “And I was just drawn to how palpable and powerful that was.”

His band They Are Gutting A Body of Water, known as Tagabow to fans — more on that name in a minute — is the most acclaimed Philly act of 2025.

Both the New York Times and the New Yorker have called the band’s Lotto one of the best albums of the year. Rolling Stone called it “heavier than heaven, hotter than hell, bold as love.”

The Tagabow sound is often categorized as shoegaze, the evolving subgenre invented to describe the ethereal sonic schmear conjured by 1990s bands like My Bloody Valentine and Lush. (Musicians appeared to stare at their own feet on stage, hence the name.)

But Dulgarian’s music tends to be more rugged and fast-paced, with roots in punk and the guitarist and bandleader’s affection for 1990s bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth. But more than any genre, Dulgarian says, Tagabow belongs in a geographically specific category.

“Are we shoegaze? Are we a punk band?” he asks. “What we are is Philadelphia music. There is a long lineage of Philly music that is very strictly this place.”

Along with prominent indie acts like Alex G and Spirit of the Beehive, Dulgarian names Blue Smiley, Cooking, Horsecops, and Gunk as bands that inhabit the Philly underground scene of house shows and DIY venues that Tagabow is emerging from.

Dulgarian has put out music by many of those artists — as well as breakout artists MJ Lenderman and Wednesday — on his own label Julia’s War, which releases music digitally and on cassette.

Dulgarian, 35, grew up splitting time with his father, a dirt track race car driver, in New York’s Hudson Valley and his mother, who did secretarial work, in North Jersey, “which has a similar kind of brashness” as Philadelphia, he said.

He first started playing guitar when he was 13 and 14, and skateboarding led him to start to get serious about music, and develop a fascination with Philadelphia.

“The first time a heard punk rock was in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater I,” he recalls, speaking of the video game which, in its second iteration, featured a recreation of the Philly street skating mecca Love Park.

He got serious about making music at 19 during a 13-month prolonged stay in a drug rehab facility in Albany, NY. “I always say that I don’t want this stuff to define me,” Dulgarian says, speaking of his struggles with addiction. “But it’s so much a part of my story.”

Lotto begins with “The Chase,” about a harrowing bout of fentanyl withdrawal this past New Year’s Day. (He’s been clean since then and calls himself “an inactive addict.”) It’s also a love letter to Dulgarian’s girlfriend Emily Lofing, who’s the band’s bassist. (Her name is tattooed on Dulgarian’s right bicep.)

“She gazes at me lovingly,” Dulgarian talk/sings, recounting waking up to 2025 with Lofing by his side in their West Philly apartment. “The me she remembers, the promising mirage of water in this cruel desert.”

In 2016, while still in New York state, Dulgarian put out an album called topiary with the band Jouska. Playing shows at underground venues like Pharmacy in South Philly, he felt the pull of the tight knit Philly music community.

He moved here and started performing as They Are Gutting A Body of Water with drummer Ben Opatut, who’s still a member of the band, along with guitarist PJ Carroll.

The band name was the result of a misheard song lyric from Grouper, the California ambient musician Elizabeth Harris.

“All these bands were calling themselves Football Dad or Soccer Mommy,” Dulgarian said. “And I was going to name this band the most psychotic thing I possibly could,” because Tagabow’s music on early releases like 2018’s Gestures Been and 2019’s Destiny XL, “felt incendiary.”

Grouper makes “really calming music,” Dulgarian said, but Harris’ lyrics are difficult to hear. “I was singing this song called “Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping” incorrectly. I was singing ‘They are gutting a body of water.’”

As a band name, it stuck. “Now it’s my cross to bear,” he said with a laugh.

“Then people started calling us Tagabow, which is an acronym that phonetically makes sense. So we lucked out, I guess.”

Dulgarian loves what he calls the “strangeness” of his adopted city.

“There are places you can go in Philadelphia and you’re like, ‘How can this possibly exist? This can’t be real. It’s like Eraserhead, and how David Lynch was so inspired by Philly.

“It feels so otherworldly in comparison to other places. And the music feels otherworldly sometimes. But it also feels jovial in light of clear anger and dissatisfaction. Every time we go on tour, I come back to this filthy place and I just feel so at home.”

Lotto eschews electronic seasoning, aiming to capture four musicians playing live in the same room. It delivers an emphatic rush from a band poised to find a wider audience that’s now on the same label as Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, and Phish.

Still, he was surprised when the New York Times named Lotto one of the most anticipated albums of the fall, alongside Cardi B and Jeff Tweedy.

“I sent it to my mom. She was like, ‘What?! Oh my God!’ I always joke about this, but I set the bar so low with my parents, because I was a drug addict and I tortured them for a long time.

“So for me to be able to point at something and say: “Look, it’s happening!’ is great. And I think that really clicked for my mom. She was like: ”You’re doing pretty well. You’re good at this thing.’”

The band is set to play three shows at the First Unitarian Church to wrap up a U.S. tour for the album, the fourth by the band Dulgarian formed after moving to Philly from upstate New York in 2016.

The Church shows on Dec. 12, 13, and 19 will be performed Tagabow-style, with Dulgarian and band mates facing each other on a custom made stage in the middle of the dance floor, with the musicians encircled by the crowd.

Lotto consists of 10 tightly disciplined songs that rage on and resolve themselves in just 27 minutes. It kicks up a righteous racket and conjures moments of real beauty as Dulgarian reaches out for human connections in a relentlessly commodified world.

The album mixes self-reflection while reaching for something pure and true, hoping to find peaceful sanctuary in the eye of a hurricane of noise.

It’s the band’s first album to be released on prominent label ATO Records.

“I was thinking about how I seek out brief, artificial reprieves from existence,” said Dulgarian. “And what I was really trying to get at is the American Dream, and how hollow it is. That the thing I will remember is not whatever commercial success my band has, but the guy at the corner store I connect with.

“That’s where the title comes from: this whole idea of the lottery and ‘I can change my life if I buy this ticket.’ That the American Dream of convenience — it’s not real. I think the things in life that are worth it are hard to earn.”

They Are Gutting A Body Of Water at First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., at 8 p.m. Dec. 12, 13 and 19. r5productions.com.