Ah Holly Fam'ly – Loneliest City

This tune's melancholic theme outlined with an uplifting arrangement smacks of a long winter in a Portland basement. From November to June we get to log some serious indoor time here in Portland. This kind of intricate orchestration is what you get when a band goes into hermit mode for the winter. The melody in the song pokes through the grey clouds and offers a little hope for the sunnier months ahead. The combination of woodwinds, strings and group vocals is the kind of musical alchemy that a lot of artists here take a stab at performing but rarely end up sounding this light and effortless.

Death Songs – Naturally

Around 2004 there was this migration of young hipsters into north Portland. The cheap rent beckoned and of course touched off a serious episode of gentrification, leaving us with the squeaky clean Mississippi Avenue. In the early days there was the popularisation of the "North Portland BBQ show" – basically a bunch of people eating grilled food, drinking cheap beer and watching surprisingly good bands. That's when I heard Nick Delffs, then playing in the now defunct Shaky Hands. He was the king of the BBQ show. This is a track off his new projects record. For some reason it takes me back to the days of walking home through tree-lined streets, still half-drunk, suffering from heat exhaustion and not believing what I'd just experienced but knowing, since I had no job, I was going to do it again tomorrow.

Blitzen Trapper – Furr

Blitzen Trapper are a Portland band full of native Oregonians (a bigger rarity than one may think). They told me they all grew up and started playing music in Salem, Oregon, and from the sound of this song that comes as no surprise. This narrative about the metamorphosis of a young man into a wolf musically invokes such a pastoral atmosphere that it's hard for me not to think about the expansive tracts of green lining the I-5 corridor south of Portland. If you roll the windows down on a nice day driving down to Salem, you might be able to squint at a distant outcrop of trees and convince yourself that you've seen that boy-wolf, depending on what you've been consuming.

Portland Cello Project featuring Justin Power – Seeds May Fall

Kudos to the Portland Cello Project for tapping into the musical fecundity of the city. For several years now this cellists collective have been reimagining the work of local artists with full-on arrangements for a stage full of cellos. The ringleader is Doug Jenkins, who, on this particular track, has done a great job of taking Justin Powers' already beautiful song out of the bedroom and transforming it into a fully orchestrated chamber piece. People think this kind of mystical collaboration happens in Portland all the time. Some claim it must be the effect of some drug the city has covertly put in the water. As if all the musicians know each and work on music collectively all the time. Well, it's kinda true.

Y La Bamba – Como Ratones

Y La Bamba are proof of the awesome richness and creativity of Portland, often playing their songs in Spanish. This track is one of my favourites. Luz Elena Mendoza, who's originally from Ashland, Oregon, showcases her flair for Latin music while blending it with the more regionally traditional sounds of contemporary underground music. Demographically Portland is one of the whitest cities in the country, Y La Bamba has the potential to sound like a vacation given the circumstances.

Barna Howard – Horizons Fade

Barna Howard creates this easygoing folk music in the spirit of John Prine that seems to fit just right while cruising around the river roads looking for the next swimming hole. A native Missourian, I hear a little contemplation about his journey out west in his line "Horizons fade in the rear view mirror to let me know I've gone". Portland has been a mecca of sorts for twentysomethings for about 10 years now, which has brought so many uniquely talented people here with all kinds of different voices and musical backgrounds.

Talkdemonic – Cascade Locks

If you drive east out of Portland on I-84 you go right through one of the most ridiculously beautiful stretches of highway in the whole US. The Columbia river gorge is massively scenic and embodies all of the superlatives you can think of when it comes to notions of the Pacific Northwest: Mount Hood in the distance, the Columbia river impersonating an ocean, and waterfalls cresting over rocks. Talkdemonic's song takes its title from the locks used to get the huge river barges through dams on this length of the river. The track creates a moody backdrop to the scenery with its ethereal synths and strings filling up all that space. The rhythm chugs along perfectly if you are going about 65mph, trying to take it all in.

Dolorean – Beachcomber Blues

Undoubtedly, while travelling through Oregon you'd be advised to check out the coast. Here we've got a lament on the sand from Al James and Dolorean. You can hear the ghost of Neil Young in there but somehow it feels quite a bit more Oregonian to me. Perhaps it's too easy to see James conjuring lines like "There's too much open space / There's too much sand in my shoes" while strolling beside Haystack Rock near Cannon Beach. Or maybe it's the twinkly keyboards that ground it not only geographically but also musically to this area. I think maybe it's an indigenous northwest thing to associate introspection with the beach. After all, we are not Californians.

Loch Lomond – Stripe II

Ritchie Young, a native of Bend, Oregon, and leader of Loch Lomond, has been making music in Portland for at least 10 years and during that time has probably had more than 30 different players in the band. It's quite possible that 30% of the active musicians in this town have played in Loch Lomond or at least played a show with them. This song has such a nocturnal sound to it. Kind of like driving through drizzle over the burnside bridge at 3am after a breakup. Something like that.

Elliott Smith – Rose Parade

The most ubiquitous song on the mix but it needs to be included. Elliot Smith is still spoken about in these parts with a particular type of reverence and admiration. I don't want to wax poetic. The Rose Parade still indeed goes down here in Portland. This song talks about it. It's really good.

Justin Ringle is the lead guitarist and vocalist for Portland-based indie folk band Horse Feathers

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