Dilly Dally Fest is back for its third year, once again bringing together Philadelphia’s underground music community for a powerful celebration of sound and solidarity. The event will take place on November 15th and 16th at Underground Arts and will feature a wide range of emo, screamo, punk, and experimental acts from across the scene.

“Dilly Dally Fest is an annual DIY emo and screamo festival that we host in Philadelphia and have hosted for the last three years in a row,” say the organizers. “We started the fest as a way to try and bridge the gaps between older and newer bands in the scene and create a wider sense of community across age groups.” - Dove Fleetwood, one of the event organizers, and founders of Bread Box Philly.

The lineup this year includes influential bands such as Snowing, In Loving Memory, The Spirit of Versailles, and Heavy Heavy Low Low. Alongside them are exciting newer acts like Your Arms Are My Cocoon, Catalyst, Febuary, Ultra Deluxe, Arrows in Her, and Morning Dew. With more than twenty bands performing, the festival offers a full day of emotional intensity, musical experimentation, and community energy.

But Dilly Dally Fest has always been about more than music. From the beginning, it has served as a platform for raising funds and awareness for urgent causes. “We use it as a way to raise funds for various causes,” the organizers explain.

In its first year, the fest raised fifteen hundred dollars for Philadelphia FIGHT, which provides medical services to LGBTQIA plus individuals. The second year included donations to the Bread and Roses Community Fund and Savage Sisters, a mutual aid group that supports people living with or affected by substance use disorder.

This year, Dilly Dally Fest will raise funds for Gaza Soup Kitchen and the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. A portion of every ticket will again go to the Bread and Roses Community Fund, which supports grassroots organizing in the Philadelphia area.

Taken by Shannon Nicole Photo from Dilly Dally 2

The festival is an all ages event with a strong focus on accessibility and inclusion. It offers something rare in the current music landscape, a space built not on profit or status but on care, collaboration, and a love for the scene itself.

In a time when independent music often struggles for space and support, Dilly Dally Fest stands as a clear example of what can happen when people come together with purpose. It is loud, honest, deeply emotional, and absolutely necessary.

NMD: What is Bread Box and how collaborative is it all?
Dove: Bread Box started as a booking collective and event space run by a handful of friends that was very collaborative, but as we lost our venue only 4 months after opening, we were not able to find another space and members of the collective didn't have the time to put as much effort in as before, so it ultimately fell upon just myself to keep up with the bookings and shows, with Aloe and Mark booking one or two shows every few months. Aloe and myself do nearly everything for Dilly Dally together; I handle the bookings and band management, and Aloe handles the venue communication and accounting.

NMD: I noticed there's been quite a few bands with trans/nonbinary representation this year, and in past lineups. Why do you think LGBTQIA+ representation is important in music spaces?
Dove: Everyone who has been involved in any way with booking or running Bread Box has been somewhere on the queer spectrum and Aloe and myself are both trans/non-binary and musicians, so from the start it was imperative that our events were for queer people and by queer people. While we also book bands that don't have queer members, it is our goal to book as many queer DIY bands as we can and give them the platform they deserve in our beautiful city of Philadelphia.

NMD: I'm sure you are excited for ALL the bands playing, but who in particular are you really proud to have gotten confirmed for this year's festival?
Dove: We are very excited about all of the bands, but some noteworthy ones are this years reunion bands; The Exploration and Arrows In Her! The last Arrows In Her show was in 2019 and the last Exploration show was way back in 2015, so this will be their first show back in a decade! Other bands we are excited for are some of the West Coast bands like First Day Back and February, and The Spirit Of Versailles, who haven't played Philly in over 20 years(from what I can tell, they last played Philly in 1999 at Stalag 13!!)

Philadelphia DIY Collective Host 3rd Annual Fest