Every band to ever reach a certain level of notoriety, be it The Beatles, The Byrds or The Band, finds a time — usually early in their career — when things start moving faster and swelling to new levels. For Philadelphia dusty rockers Dr. Dog — who may be best described as a natural progression of all three of the just-mentioned bands — things finally picked up last year.

“The big milestone coming out of 2007 was the release of We All Belong, which began our first time touring as headliners,” Dr. Dog singer/songwriter Scott McMicken recently explained to NUVO. “We’d been touring for three or four years before that, always opening for other bands. You can’t do that forever, so last year we started headlining, which was much more fulfilling and gave us a sense of where we were at as a band.”

Known to be much more of a lo-fi (read: DIY) studio band than a touring outfit, the Dogs found new legs in 2007, touring hard, learning their strengths on the stage each night. “We finally got to play sets longer than 35 minutes, which made us a much better band. We felt more conscious of ourselves as band members, as part of something that took a life of its own as a result of playing out.”

After a full year spent playing late night shows and gigs with the Wilcos and Raconteurs of the world, Dr. Dog — Frank McElroy, Juston Stens, McMicken, Toby Leaman and Zach Miller — finished their sweaty breakout year back where it all started, in the artful streets of Philadelphia.

“We finished touring last year around Christmastime, took a week off, then, around Jan. 1, we started on an album,” McMicken said. Those recordings resulted in the band’s just-released new record, Fate. We like to try to have at least one album per year, so we only had two months to record Fate in time for it to be produced and marketed — much less time than we ever had before. But we worked to greater satisfaction and results than ever.”

Asked about the notion of building on the great success they saw last year, McMicken seemed instantly humbled. “If everything in this band disappears tomorrow I would for the rest of my life look back in shock at the kinds of opportunities we’ve been given as musicians,” he said.