In less than half a year, Milwaukee’s Atlatl has transformed itself from virtual unknowns to one of the city’s most likeable bands. Of course, they’ve had some help. Radio Milwaukee 88.9 has all but adopted the band, giving their day-dreamy single “Hey Man” the kind of airplay the station usually reserves for Atmosphere and Curtis Mayfield. The song deserves the exposure: Sweet and effortlessly hooky, it evokes one of Modest Mouse’s long drives with nothing to think about.

Summerfest has long been the domain of bright, cheery music, not aphotic hardcore and grinding metal, so it was a bit of a spectacle Thursday when the Cascio Groove Garage hosted a line-up of loud area bands, booked by the local punk scene’s busiest impresario, Kelsey Kaufmann of Cougar Den. Milwaukee’s hardcore scene has long hosted some of the city’s most visionary bands, so it was a welcome change to see some of its young warriors finally get their due at Milwaukee’s biggest music festival. Flanked by a supportive, receptive crowd of peers that crowded the front of the stage, most groups fit in at the Big Gig better than might be expected. Novel, for instance, proved they weren’t nearly as menacing as their demonic . . .

Stateside, raves seem harder and harder to come by these days. Still, the rain-slicked aluminum bleachers of Summerfest seemed an oddly perilous dance venue for the return performance of the low-profile big beat pioneers, The Crystal Method. Taking the helm from DJ Dieselboy in mid-beat, Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan arrived with a blasé casualness that seemed to pervade the whole evening, underscoring the intensely omnipresent volume. Kirkland, as the Pesci to Jordan’s De Niro, played the group’s flamboyantly mischievous half, tagging out of duty frequently to stalk the stage and giving himself devil horns while the more stoic Jordan manned the decks.

Three of Milwaukee’s most reliable bands brought a little bit of the Cactus Club to Summerfest Monday night at the Cascio Interstate Music Groove Garage. Music history is filled with great dropped ideas, and the 1990s, in particular, were rife with them. Milwaukee’s Testa Rosa picks up some of these loose ends, continuing where bands like Belly, That Dog, Throwing Muses or pretty much any other band that ever featured Tanya Donelly or one of the Haden triplets left off. Allusions to the ’90s abound: The guitars adhere to the same strum-and-squall dynamic of ’90s alterna-pop; Betty Blexrud-Strigens cough-syrup-smooth vocals evoke Kim Deal; the hazy bass riff on “Ollie Delilah” nods to Weezer’s iconic “Only in Dreams” riff.

At first, Matthew “Matisyahu” Miller appears an unlikely a reggae savior, but by this point, the self-proclaimed former Deadhead turned Chassid has probably gotten used to the burden of proving that appearances can be deceiving. Still, when Miller first set foot before the noticeably packed Summerfest crowd, he seemed to stutter slightly, as if for a moment even he had trouble taking his success seriously. Thankfully, with the onset of “Jerusalem,” came an energetic . . .

With their Coldplay-slick ballads and Rooney-esque rockers, The Good Luck Joes’ have been making “Grey’s Anatomy” soundtrack-ready pop songs since before there was a “Grey’s Anatomy” soundtrack. Although the star-making ABC drama hasn’t adopted the Milwaukee group yet, a number of other ABC series have: the short-lived drama “Six Degrees” and ABC Family shows “Greek” and “Kyle XY” have featured the Joes’ . . .

…Now that’s how you sing amazing grace. Milwaukee’s John the Savage imagine what would happen if Booker T used his MGs for evil instead of good. From the cacophonous percussion to the overzealous trumpet to their howling singer, Michael Skorcz (who channels Tom Waits’ drunken, pirate pastor persona), everything about their ramshackle sound is bold and loud, so the band made a swift impression with their headlining set last night . . .

“I knew someone would cover this song at Summerfest,” my friend moaned as “The House of the Rising Sun” drifted over the festival grounds from stages away. The band playing the song wasn’t a cover band, though; it was the group that made the song famous 40-some years ago, The Animals, sounding very much like an Animals cover band.