Experiments were performed in a partially premixed bluff-body stabilized combustor in the regimes of combustion noise, intermittency, and thermoacoustic instability. Simultaneous measurements of unsteady pressure fluctuations and flow-field using time-resolved two-component particle image velocimetry reveal dominant dynamics at 141.9 Hz which is responsible for thermoacoustic instability. In the intermittent regime that presages thermoacoustic instability, there are two distinct frequencies: a low-frequency component at 30.7 Hz dominant in the velocity spectra (hydrodynamic mode) and a higher frequency component at 176.4 Hz dominant in the pressure spectra (acoustic mode). Examining the phase relationship between the two modes in the intermittent regime using a variant of the Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) confirms that the appearance of bursts of periodic pressure oscillations coincide with the time instants when the hydrodynamic and the acoustic modes are phase synchronized. To identify the flow structure dynamics observed only during sound production, we compute ridges in the fields of backward-time finite time Lyapunov exponents. The roll up of shear layers from the dump plane and the leading edge of the bluff body and subsequent impingement on combustor walls are identified as the dominant features of the flow during thermoacoustic instability as well as during the bursting stage of intermittency. We show convincingly that these identified dynamics correspond to the acoustic mode using DMD filtered flow fields comprising only of the acoustic mode. © 2019 Author(s).