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World Cafe Presents: Dr. Dog

The Philadelphia indie-rock sextet Dr. Dog returns to its formative years with the release of Psychedelic Swamp, a "new old" album that comes out Feb. 5. The collection is a re-recording of the band's long-out-of-print debut, which was produced at home on an 8-track in the late '90s and early '00s and self-released on cassette. Those hard-to-find early recordings capture Dr. Dog at its weirdest and most adventurous, when it was working in elements of trippy audio collage and lo-fi noise with seeds of songs phasing in and out of the mix.

Psychedelic Swamp 2.0 was first presented last fall as a stage production with Philly's Pig Iron Theater. It took the album's pop nuggets out of the haze and brought them to the forefront, in the process unearthing some of Dr. Dog's best songs: the burning soul of "Bring My Baby Back," the jaunty pop of "Dead Record Player," the cosmic dreamscape of "Holes In My Back."

Here, Dr. Dog performs "Bring My Baby Back" for World Cafe, recorded at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia on Jan. 21.

Copyright 2016 XPN

John Vettese is a music writer and photographer based in Philadelphia. He is the editor of WXPN's music blog The Key, producer of the audio/video live performance series The Key Studio Sessions, and a contributor to Magnet Magazine.