They are small chestnut brown birds with a dark black cap, a whitish underside and pale yellow iris.

The dark-fronted babbler was formally described in 1839 by the English naturalist Thomas Jerdon under the binomial name Brachypteryx atriceps.

It was moved to Dumetia with the tawny-bellied babbler based on the results of a large molecular phylogenetic study published in 2019.

The two subspecies in the Western Ghats have black hoods, but the two Sri Lankan races have this reduced to a dark bandit mask.

The subspecies in the southern Western Ghats bourdilloni has a duller sooty-black hood, browner underside[9] and the upper parts are more olive.

They forage in parties and clamber up vegetation and when disturbed, they tend to drop from the topmost perches of the bush into the undergrowth.