Birmingham, Ala.

A reflection of today’s deep, abundant rock-and-pop scene, mega-festivals offer so much of a good thing. Consider the supersize bill at Lollapalooza, held in Chicago’s Grant Park this past weekend: some 170 acts including major names like Ryan Adams, Arcade Fire, Chance the Rapper, the Killers, Lorde, Run the Jewels and the xx, as well as still-blossoming talent like Banks, Car Seat Headrest, the Lemon Twigs, Mura Masa, Sampha and more. Beginning this Friday in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Outside Lands features A Tribe Called Quest, Alt-J, Gorillaz, Metallica, Solange and the Who, among dozens of others. Throughout the summer festival season, promoters book artists who have a national—and in some cases an international—following for vast, appreciative crowds.

Contrast all that with Secret Stages, a self-proclaimed “music discovery festival” held here last Friday and Saturday. In its seventh year, Secret Stages presented 60 bands with nary a household name among them. Which isn’t to say the music was insufficient. To the contrary, the festival reaffirmed the quality of today’s rock and pop.

Though its mission doesn’t seem any more ambitious than to showcase unrecognized bands to local music fans—it has rejected overtures to grow the festival at the risk of altering its character—Secret Stages has presented a few groups across the years that have found wider acclaim. Dawes and Shovels & Rope, both of whom will perform this weekend at Outside Lands, appeared here in 2011 and ’12, respectively. MC Taylor, who works as Hiss Golden Messenger, did a solo set in 2012, the same year the Birmingham-based St. Paul and the Broken Bones played Secret Stages. Hiss Golden Messenger was featured at this year’s 50th-anniversary celebration of the Monterey International Pop Music Festival. In ’14, St. Paul and the Broken Bones played the massive Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.

This year, the bands here seemed less concerned with what may be than with getting through the gig. A window-rattling thunderstorm delayed the Friday evening program at two outdoor parking-lot venues. When the Prescriptions, an alt-country group down from Nashville, took the stage, no more than a handful of soggy people were in attendance to hear David Henriksson’s slide guitar slither around singer Hays Ragsdale’s story songs. Hours later, with the rain long gone, Skyway Man, the current working name of James Wallace, played a delightful set of eccentric songs with airtight arrangements that at times fused, via a circuitous route, folk, experimentalism and even prog rock. Mr. Wallace, a Richmond, Va., native, and his adroit three-piece band featuring drummer Dabney Morris of Wild Cub will appear at next month’s Americana Music Festival in Nashville, one of about 300 acts to do so. (They’re on the poster in eye-straining type.) The group will bring a touch of the unusual to those proceedings.