The No Depression Festival at Marymoor Park on Saturday is a daylong plunge into the "alternative country" genre. By its name, you might think it would be upbeat. You would be wrong.

The festival takes its title from Seattle-based No Depression magazine, the recognized authority on the genre, which in turn was named after two grim country songs whose lyrics state the only sure escape from depression is death.

OK, the name comes just as much from a song about the Great Depression ("No Depression in Heaven," popularized by the Carter Family in 1936) as it does a song about psychological depression (that's the double entendre in the cover version by Uncle Tupelo from 1990, called "No Depression"), but it's a damn depressing sentiment either way.

Both songs and the rest of the preview after the jump.

The magazine ceased publication last year and is survived by its lively website www.nodepression.com, a biannual "bookazine," and now the music festival. All the festival's performers are excellent storytellers, most with lyrics that could hold their own as poetry, and share a no-frills, guitar-based musical sensibility that may or may not sound "country."

The headliner is Gillian Welch, a singer-songwriter with a near-perfect heathery alto voice. She delivers it with measured restraint, like she's clenching her jaws, over fingerpicked acoustic guitar courtesy of David Rawlings and Welch herself.

Listen to Welch songs such as "Time (The Revelator)" -- which you can find fully picked apart on the community forums at nodepression.com -- and notice how pretty everything sounds, even when she leans hard on minor chords and seeks out the most dissonant ways a guitar can twang. Sometimes it sounds like she replaced one string with barbed wire, but the effect is calming. "Time's a revelator" is the refrain, a simple truth with poetic power.

Welch has been known to play with Bright Eyes, the famous American indie-rock band led by Conor Oberst that doesn't usually sound country-y, but sometimes does. The specific collaboration is a sign of a general indie-rock/alt-country affinity, born of both genres' proclivities for relentlessly documenting mental states in song lyrics -- a writerly sensibility -- and also advertising a vaguely intellectual underdog vibe.

The other big name at the No Depression Festival is Iron & Wine, a Sub Pop-signed act most people don't associate with country music, but neo-folk or some undefined style of soft music you play in headphones or your car, preferably at night by yourself. "Alt-country" being a nebulous designation, Iron & Wine's whisper-voiced narratives and acoustic guitar fits the bill.

Among other artists performing Saturday are Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter, Patterson Hood & the Screwtopians, Justin Townes Earle, Jessica Lea Mayfield, a Seattle roots-music all-star revue (which includes Sub Pop artist Sera Cahoone, Star Anna, Ian Moore, Zoe Muth, Mark Pickerel, Kristen Ward and members of the Maldives and North Twin, backed by Jeff Fielder, Ty Bailie, Eric Eagle and Rebecca Young) and Zee Avi.