The group began as a part-time offshoot of the more traditional indie rock act Raccoon. Over the course of several years, guitarist Toby Leaman and drummer Scott McMicken found enough free time to record the casual, sprawling 35-track set The Psychedelic Swamp in a basement rehearsal space, finally self-releasing it in 2001. As Raccoon ended, McMicken and Leaman transformed Dr. Dog into a proper band, with McMicken on guitar and Leaman on bass (the two shared songwriting and vocals), as well as guitarist Doug O'Donnell, keyboard player Zach Miller, and drummer Juston Stens. This lineup recorded 2003's more focused and poppy Toothbrush, which -- like The Psychedelic Swamp -- received a low-key, self-distributed release.

When My Morning Jacket's Jim James, a friend of Leaman and McMicken from their Raccoon days, hand-picked Dr. Dog to open for his band on an East Coast tour, the band's almost nonexistent national profile began to rise. With O'Donnell replaced by former Raccoon bassist Andrew Jones and several Philadelphia friends making guest appearances, 2005's Easy Beat was picked up for distribution by the indie label National Parking. Following its release, the band toured again with My Morning Jacket and M. Ward and performed several well-received sets during the 2006 South by Southwest festival in Austin. The stopgap EP Takers and Leavers was released in September 2006 in advance of We All Belong, which arrived in early 2007.

Throughout the rest of that year, Dr. Dog began posting previously unreleased tracks on their website; the songs were later released as Passed Away, Vol. 1 in March 2008. In the summer of that same year, the group released Fate. Fate featured some of the band's most polished production to date. It also became Dr. Dog's highest charting album, peaking at number 86 on the Billboard 200 and earning positive reviews from outlets like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly. After touring in support of the album, the group signed with the ANTI- record label and released 2010's Shame, Shame, a modern album that featured more guitars than the band's earlier work. Golden Boots member Dimitri Manos, who had played with the band on Easy Beat, joined up with the band as a full member, and made his first appearance on a full-length album in 2012 with the release of Be the Void early that year. ~ Stewart Mason

Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog will release their new album entitled B-Room Oct. 1st on Anti-. Showcasing some of their most mature, streamlined and soulful writing to date, the record is the culmination of a complete overhaul of the band’s writing and recording process, which finds them in a new self-built studio, writing songs live in rehearsal, and using the rock solid groove of the band, honed through workmanlike touring, as a powerful compositional tool.

B-Room, in its purest form, is a soul album. It may be obvious as the first track opens with the Gamble and Huff inspired, “The Truth.” But as the album progresses the music continues to take on a soulfulness that is vibrant in its simplicity. As McMicken put it, “The hallmark of soul music for me is the arrangements are simple rather than virtuosic, and that the sound creates a feeling that is intuitive rather than intellectual.” To listen to “The Truth”, see the video below.

The story begins with jackhammers instead of guitars. After ending the lease at home studio “Meth Beach” where they had been headquartered for the past eight years, the musicians took on the commitment of constructing an entirely new recording space within a now defunct silversmith mill. As the band’s bassist-vocalist Toby Leaman put it, “The whole process of recording really started with building the studio.”

As the band now understands, making a record is a lot like doing construction. Both require a similar amount of frustration, intensity, and cohesion. By building a space first and releasing all of that emotion, the band was then free to engage in their creative process without the expectation or preconception that they admittedly had brought into other sessions. Recorded primarily in live takes, the songs seamlessly fuse the spontaneity of the band’s live performances with the intricacy of their kaleidoscopic composition. Both Leaman and guitarist Scott McMicken credit their sonic evolution with relying less on the pre-produced demos and more with a reliance on the musicians surrounding them.