Seattle

When you talk about the sound of that rain-soaked Northwestern town known as the Emerald City, most people think of the early-’90s grunge explosion. The raw, punk-played-sideways riff of Nirvana’s world-changing anti-anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the leonine roar of Eddie Vedder on Pearl Jam’s milestone “Alive” will loom large in Seattle lore forever, but the story doesn’t stop there. It keeps moving on, through the warm-blooded electro-pop of the 2003 Postal Service smash “Such Great Heights” to the artful, CSN-goes-indie folk-rock finery of ’08 breakout band Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal,” and beyond.

Seattleites take hold of their influences and twist in Next Steps.

Seattle is a city where something strange and amazing happens to the sounds that drift in from other places, a natural kind of sonic phenomenon that couldn’t occur anywhere else. Where else could Townes Van Zandt’s lonesome folk lament “Snake Mountain Blues” become a snarling, country-punk rave-up in the hands of the Walkabouts? Even the winsome winds of power pop gain a bit more bite when they blow across the Puget Sound, like the Posies’ tuneful-but-tough “Dream All Day.” And when the Gossip’s fiery frontwoman Beth Ditto belts out her band’s breakthrough tune “Standing In the Way of Control,” you can hear her classic-soul and gospel influences singing out clear as day amid the blaring post-punk riffs.

Follow a twisting, turning Seattle route through garage-rock, hip-hop, and more, in Deep Cuts.

Let’s face it, there really is no “Seattle sound” – the city’s musical history is just too vast to be nailed down to any one style. It’s a shifting, swirling musical microcosm that can encompass both the insanity of the Sonics’ rabid ‘60s garage-rock freakout “Psycho” and the murky mood of former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan’s haunted, smoky folk ballad “Carry Home.” You can turn a corner and catch an earful of underground hip-hop crew Boom Bap Project’s rhyme-spitting reminder of their home town’s dark side “Welcome to Seattle,” then turn another and stride straight into the heady experimentalism of Wayne Horvitz’s avant-classical epic “Whispers, Hymns and a Murmur.”

Over the years, Seattle has given the world a lot more than just Starbucks and the Mariners. Name a style of music and there’s a strong chance that at least one of its iconic figures has called the city home, from psychedelic sultan Jimi Hendrix to classic-rock sibling sensations Heart, electro-industrial titans KMFDM to alt-rock heroes Death Cab for Cutie. And that’s not even getting into the town’s ’90s status as indie-rock center of the universe after the grunge explosion. But you don’t need to start digging into history books and spelunking in audio archives to get the ultimate Seattle sonic experience — we’ve scoured the city’s rain-slick streets and soaked up all the sounds that matter from the musical mecca of the Northwest.