That's this steadily rising band's new album, and the most-focused showcase yet for their harmony-happy carnival of sound that invites contemporary listeners with songs that playfully echo cherished '60s acts like the Beatles and the Band.

Fate (***1/2) is Dr. Dog's third disc, if you count from Easy Beat, which earned the quintet an instant national profile among indie music fans in 2005. But it's actually the fifth starting with Psychedelic Swamp, the obscure high-concept set recorded in singer-guitarist Scott McMicken's flooded West Chester basement bedroom in 2001.

Since then, Dr. Dog has remained steadfastly DIY in its approach, while literally moving up in the world.

Like its 2007 predecessor, We All Belong, the self-produced Fate was recorded in the band's second-floor digs in the aptly named Art & Industry building in Kensington. It was released yesterday on Park the Van Records, the Schwenksville label that is also home to Dr. Dog pals The Teeth and Pepi Ginsberg.

The band crisscrossed the states in their Club Wagon van last year to do more than 150 shows in support of We All Belong, which sold 30,000 copies. Over the winter, the hard-working outfit - proclaimed "America's Next Great Band" on the cover of this month's Relix music magazine - spent six weeks winnowing down dozens of tracks to find the 11 destined to end up on Fate.

"You throw stuff against the wall, and you make a mess, and you hope to find a picture in it," says McMicken, the band's red-headed psychedelic philosopher, who looks nearly unrecognizable in wire-frame glasses rather than the big plastic shades and floppy hat he's been known to wear on stage.

Fate, like all Dr. Dog records, was written in equal share by McMicken and his co-front man, bassist Toby Leaman (the band includes keyboardist Zach Miller, guitarist Frank McElroy, and drummer Juston Stens). The pair met during an eighth-grade field trip to Ellis Island, while growing up in West Grove, in Chester County. Both attended West Chester University.

On this day, McMicken does most of the talking because, as fate would have it, the normally gregarious Leaman all but lost his voice as a result of an accidental head-butt in the neck from his wife during a white-water tubing ride the day before.

The album title comes from a line in a haunted, powerful song called "The Beach," which was written by Leaman, the son of a Methodist minister.

"The memories we've buried have just taken seed / When springtime comes, they'll turn into weeds / And they'll creep through your window to smother your dreams / Fate has a funny way of coming around."

The decision to call the album Fate, says McMicken, was a typical Dr. Dog process that began as an "incidental, random, off-the-top-of-your-head suggestion, before evolving into some gigantic universe of internal meaning."

That might make Fate seem like a heavy-handed concept album, especially since its production was animated by debates about whether fate and free will can coexist (the answer, Dr. Dog decided, was yes). But the album is breezy and light on its feet.

Songs like McMicken's Lennonesque "From" and "The Rabbit, the Bat, and the Reindeer," and Leaman's open-hearted "Hang On," search for home truths in a superficial world by wrapping their musings in fetching melodies and stunning harmony singing.

Fate may or may not have played a role in the rise of Dr. Dog, whose name comes from a mis-hearing of the title to the Captain Beefheart song "Doctor Dark." But hastened by some big breaks out of the blue, they've become, along with cacophonous pranksters Man Man, one of the most prominent bands in the burgeoning Philadelphia rock scene.

In 2004, McMicken gave My Morning Jacket singer Jim James a CD case covered with sprinkles. Impressed with the packaging, James listened and liked the music so much he invited Dr. Dog on tour.

The money they made there paid for equipment to record Easy Beat in Miller's West Philadelphia basement. (He and the other band members, who are in their late 20s or early 30s, are unmarried and still live in West Philly, except for Leaman, who is married and lives in Wilmington.)

Easy Beat was released by Park the Van's Chris Watson. Watson says the album was "an epiphany to me because I thought killer duos like this were a thing of the past." Comparing Leaman's raspier, rootsier style with McMicken's more whimsical psych-pop moves, Watson says, "Toby is the rock, and Scott is the bird."

But the pair, whose shared musical education includes an obsession with Rush when they were both 13, as well as a mutual admiration for Tom Waits, aren't "isolated in songwriting style and approach," says Watson. "They really influence each other and work together."

Lately, Dr. Dog is racking up celebrity endorsements. Last year, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy gave the band a shout-out in the New York Times, and Beck remixed We All Belong's "The Girl." At the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, in March, Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed announced that Dr. Dog was his new favorite band. "I like you guys, and now that I've seen you, I like you more," the legendary rocker told the band, McMicken says. "And then he disappeared into a puff of smoke," quips McElroy.

While Easy Beat received widespread praise from music bloggers and magazines, it hardly translated into overnight success. "I don't know if we ever witnessed any kind of buzz," says McMicken. "If that manifests itself in people being at your shows, we never really saw that. We got some attention from some high places . . ."

". . . but the meat and potatoes aspect didn't really add up," Leaman says. "It's been a slow build."

On its current tour, which has the band playing the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago on Aug. 2 and a free show in Rittenhouse Square on Aug. 13, the band is booked into larger venues.

"It's a great time to be in a band," says Leaman. "If you can play live, you can tour, and if you're committed to it, you can have this lifestyle for as long as you want."

Because their music bears the influence of such classic rock acts as the Beach Boys and the Zombies as well as not-so-vintage indie bands such as Pavement, people aren't quite so sure what pigeonhole to put Dr. Dog in.

"I like to think of us a pop band," says Leaman. "We don't play indie-rock . . .. We write pop songs, we make the songs tight." He slaps the back of his hand into his palm. "We're a pop band."

And when Dr. Dog aim to make pop music that will stand the test of time, they look back for inspiration to music that was made before they were born.

"In some ways we are making music that is trying to sound old," says McMicken. "And there's nothing shameful about that. Because we're not trying to seem like people from another time, or dress up like Robert Plant or something. It's on purely aesthetic terms. It's 'I ought not to go out and eat Pop-Tarts. I should eat Grandma's apple pie.' "