Hit play just to hear this critics' darling, from Portland singer's Julian Saporiti’s PhD dissertation in ethnomusicology at Brown University. Chapter 3 of it is an album called 1975. It's so good. 

With bird chirps, wave sounds, and breathy vocals, this is a gentler tune than what one might expect from the editor-in-chief of feminist guitar culture rag She Shreds, Fabi Reyna, who performs as Reyna Tropical.

Smooth verses with Bocha and Thomas, two of Portland’s biggest new rap talents who can keep it flowing all day long.

Guitar Romantic, the album that is home to this timeless, forward-charging rock song, enjoys a reissue this summer, 20 years after three members of the Portland band were killed in a tour van accident on I-5.

Spoken word lyrics amble over jangly guitar riffs and toward haunting discordant melodies on the latest from Portlander Maya Stoner.

This “almost famous” old-school hip-hop crew got the band back together in middle age, with rousing horns and memories of rolling blunts back in the day. Fun fact: there are 10 members, which would be 100 fingers of funk. 

Who says exes can't get along? Pulsing, distorted keyboards break into the dream-like chaos of a chorus on Sam Coomes and ex-wife Janet Weiss’s first album in a decade, Breaking the Balls of History, released in February.

The latest of the beguiling band’s bouncy snare hits and trademark affected vocals that sound transmitted from the space station and played through an underwater speaker. Though the band formed in New Zealand, they came to their senses and moved to Portland. 

While passing through town on an existential road trip, the Canadian DeMarco recorded not one but two instrumental odes to the Rose City for his latest album, Five Easy Hot Dogs.

The Decemberists are a Portland institution, and this is a classic from their first full-length on Hush Records in 2002. It's a delightfully chipper number considering its lyrics about “a crooked French Canadian … gut-shot running gin.”