By Gwen Schanker, News Correspondent

“Smoke weed motherf***ers,” were Snoop Dogg’s parting words as he exited the stage of Matthews Arena amid a green light-pierced cloud of smoke after his Springfest performance on Saturday. The show also featured singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles and indie band Cold War Kids.

At 5 p.m., doors opened for the concert, presented by the Council for University Programs (CUP) as the culmination of NU.F.O, the weeklong Springfest 2014 celebration. The performers played for about an hour each, with the show wrapping up around 10:30 p.m.

Cold War Kids, an American indie rock band whose most recent album, “Dear Miss Lonelyhearts,” was released in April 2013, came onstage when the show was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Although their performance served as background music for students gradually trickling in, those that arrived early stood up to sing along with vocalist Nathan Willet during some of the band’s more popular songs, including “Hang Me Up to Dry” and “Miracle Mile.”

As Cold War Kids played its final song, “Hospital Beds,” and left the stage to loud applause, the excitement for the next performer, Bareilles, was palpable. Bareilles, whose first hit single, “Love Song,” came out in 2007, recently released a new album, “The Blessed Unrest.” As she took the stage shortly after 7:30 p.m., Bareilles announced that she would be playing a “smattering” of songs off her new album mixed in with some old favorites.

“Yay! We love smatterings,” she joked, as a huge cheer went up from the audience. She proceeded to play music from her three most popular albums: “Little Voice,” “Kaleidoscope Heart” and “The Blessed Unrest.” This included the sassy “Love Song” and the motivational “Uncharted,” as well as the ballads “Manhattan,” “Gravity” and “I Choose You,” the only song Bareilles didn’t accompany on piano, instead using an acoustic guitar as her instrument of choice.

The audience response to Bareilles was particularly enthusiastic. Seaver Ricket, a freshman business major, put it simply.

“Sara Bareilles was amazing,” he said.

Sasha Gregory, a middler film studies major, went so far as to call Bareilles the highlight of the night.

“I thought Sara was the best performer,” she said.

However, Bareilles by no means stole the show from the other artists. She credited the Cold War Kids for being “f***ing awesome,” and thanked CUP for giving her the opportunity to perform at a Snoop Dogg show.

“Can you believe Snoop Dogg is gonna be here?” she asked the audience. “I don’t know what to do with myself. Northeastern knows how to do it.”

Bareilles ended things on a high note with her most recent hit single, “Brave,” exiting the stage with the optimistic sign-off, “We’ll see you soon.” There followed an intermission in which students took advantage of the snack bar at Matthews Arena and waited for Snoop Dogg to materialize.

Gregory found the break between performers to be a mood killer.

“I thought there needed to be more excitement between the acts, because there tended to be a bit of a lull,” she said.

After an extended wait in which Snoop’s DJ improvised with some modern hits like “Black and Yellow,” the rapper finally came on. Sporting a Boston Bruins cardigan, the headliner, who has gone by a number of different names including Snoop Doggy Dogg and, most recently, Snoop Lion, performed what he termed “old-school” tunes like “Gin And Juice,” “Who Am I (What’s My Name?)” and “Drop it Like it’s Hot,” as well as some more recent releases like “Beautiful.”

A.J. Means, who was at the concert as a guest of junior international affairs and anthropology major Erika Grudzinskas said that Snoop’s performance was worth the wait.

“I’m psyched that he played old school stuff,” he said.

However, Olivia Dawson, a freshman environmental science major, pointed out that many of the songs Snoop Dogg performed were those he had collaborated on with other artists.

“All the songs he was singing that we could sing along to were just features,” Dawson said, citing the rapper’s closing tune, “Young, Wild, & Free,” which also features Bruno Mars and Wiz Khalifa, as an example.

As students swarmed out of the arena, they expressed their satisfaction with the performances.

“I liked that there was a mixture of different artists,” Gregory said.

Alexa Mullin, who graduated from Northeastern in December with a degree in psychology, enthused about Snoop Dogg’s performance specifically.

“I thought it was really fun,” she said. “He played all the songs I wanted him to play, [and] he knew his audience well.”