By Julie Balise and Sarah Clark

The lights were low and the bass was high at Matthews Arena, where four acts delivered sounds from different decades and genres at Saturday night’s annual Springfest Concert.

With Dashboard Confessional headlining, the Violent Femmes, Jurassic 5 and Mix Master Mike entertained the audience for more than four hours.

Proving their music endured the years, the first band to perform was the Violent Femmes, which connected with the crowd through familiar songs like “Blister in the Sun” and “Add It Up.”

Taking the stage at 6:30 p.m., Gordon Gano, lead singer of the band, expressed a need to begin the show lightly.

“I feel like we just gotta ease into this: a lot of music, a lot of excitement,” he said.

Gano then began singing the first verse of “American Music.”

His band joined in soon after and enlivened the audience with upbeat and contagious melodies. The Violent Femmes then played their biggest hit, “Blister In The Sun.”

Heads bobbed to the hip tempo and energetic drumming. Their set featured various instruments including a harmonica, a pocket trumpet and a tenor saxophone. They concluded with “Add It Up.”

Matt Gallo-Walsh, a freshman psychology major, liked the Violent Femmes’ performance despite not having an interest in their genre of music.

“It’s not my kind of music,” he said. “[But] I enjoyed the bass player. He was tearing it up.”

The second band, Jurassic 5, urged the students to stand up and clap their hands.

Describing their music as “patterns unescapable, melodies unmistakable,” the four MCs involved the audience during the chorus of their first song, “I Am Somebody.”

Their set included a solo from the DJ, break dancing from MC Akil and frequent shout-outs to Boston.

“I think they’re just a really fun group and they keep a continuous flow,” said Hannah Echo, a freshman computer engineering major.

Combining sound clips from songs like “Brass Monkey” and “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Mix Master Mike elicited crowd-surfing and dancing when he took the stage third.

Mix Master Mike, of the Beastie Boys, delivered a powerful, bass-thumping set. Lights flashed to the rhythm as Mix Master Mike provided a diverse selection of music, including Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat.”

Stefanie Montalto, a middler behavioral neuroscience major, enjoyed the show and said Mix Master Mike helped keep student’s attention.

“I thought he was pretty good and he did a really good job with the turntable,” she said. “I liked his song choices. He definitely kept a lot of people from leaving.”

Members of headliner Dashboard Confessional, who gave an emotional performance featuring acoustic and electric songs, arrived on stage a little before 10 p.m. with smiles on their faces.

They began their set with a lively performance of “The Sharp Hint of New Tears.” Lead singer Chris Carrabba, wearing a tight red t-shirt and grey dress-pants, closed his eyes and grinned while he sang tunes like “Carry This Picture” and “Screaming Infidelities,” from the band’s two most recent albums.

Dashboard Confessional treated the audience with a cover of Phantom Planet’s “California” and Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” The band’s set also included obscure songs like “Remember to Breathe” and a new tune that included crowd participation.

The band briefly left the stage before returning for an encore, in response to their screaming fans. They finished off the evening with passionate performances of “Vindicated” and “Hands Down.”

Many students, like Andrea Fletcher, a freshman physical therapy major, said Dashboard Confessional was the highlight of the concert and said the show was “very exciting.”

Overall, students like Haley Cutler, a sophomore philosophy major, found the Springfest Concert to be very enjoyable.

“It was bloody awesome,” she said.