Dirty Projectors’ 9:30 p.m. headlining set April 25 at the third-annual Norman Music Festival was bittersweet for the thousands in attendance. Sweet were the Brooklyn sextet’s otherworldly vocal harmonies and frontman Dave Longstreth’s unique ability to recreate them with his guitar. Bitter was many fans’ realization that their party was near its end.

NMF v3.0 outdid the two previous by attracting more fans with more bands for the same price — zilch, nothing, zero, nada. That’s right, festival organizers (kudos to the non-profit Norman Arts Council) were able to expand this year’s format to two full days of music without charging your Joe Blow concertgoer a single dime. And what did the council get for its efforts? An estimated 30,000 on Main Street created an atmosphere fundraising chair Jonathan Fowler described as that of an OU game day.

“As a free festival with no click-tracks and no clicking and no ticket sales, all you can do is guess. But my guess was 8,000 for last night,” festival committee chair Quentin Bomgardner said of NMF’s first-ever Saturday attendance.

“I don’t think everybody got the message really that the closed street was on Sunday, I think a lot of people thought it was on Saturday,” Fowler said while giving his personal estimate of 10,000 to 12,000 Saturday attendees.

All that garble about community-building and non-profit organizations is well and good, but what about the music, man?

More than 150 acts entertained on 15 different stages. These included jazz acts, instrumental bands, singer-songwriters and comedians. Other acts were more than just your typical bar room locals. (Though there were plenty of those too.) Grupo Fantasma, an 11-person Latin funk act, played on the main stage Sunday, as did Boston rapper Edan (assisted by his good rapper friend Dagha) and local indie acts Mayola and Gentle Ghost.

Blackwatch Studios and Guestroom Records both opened their backdoors to host stages, featuring a ton of most excellent local talent. The Boom Bang lived up to their name by lighting smoke bombs that guitarist Tommy McKenzie stuck in his mouth while still playing, Shitty/Awesome made fools of themselves and Beau Jennings sang his love for “The Opolis,” the stage that also played host to blistering sets from Hush Hush Commotion and Colourmusic before being cleared out for a fire code violation.

Jacob Abello opened his 45-minute set at Sooner Theater by singing from the balcony, only to shed his stylish black shirt and jacket for a big finish that featured backing dancers hoisting him, Madonna-like, into the air, his arms stretched out in a cross. The Non followed Abello, closing out the theater stage with help from the Cloud Collision Orchestra and a guest appearance by none other than the patron saint of Oklahoma rock himself, Wayne Coyne. Tracks like “Pigeon Force” and “Tofu Fire” received enormous benefit from the backing violins, accentuated to perfection by the beautiful venue.

And to the headliners: The Sword trampled north from Austin with mustaches and heavy metal in tow. Electric Six induced dancing while singer Dick Valentine asked if anybody was smoking weed between songs. And then there were the Dirty Projectors. Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle harmonized beautifully all evening while drummer Brian McOmber conjured up a thunderstorm behind Dave Longstreth’s eclectic barrage of guitar-fiddling. “Remade Horizons” and “Useful Chamber” ended the festival the way a festival ought to end -- plenty of booms and bangs, all still framing the beauty of the melodies.

It’d be an understatement of the greatest caliber to call the expanded festival, which organizers want to augment further in the future, a success. It was a triumph resulting in a collective Norman hangover that won’t be cured until the beginning of the football season.