It’s not often you hear a catchy new tune during the city’s “Ask the City Manager” segment online, but it happens.

Case in point: The song, “Back to Durango,” by 2020 Fort Lewis College graduate and Boulder native Cara Elizabeth was played during the April 27 show.

The song is a single from Cara Elizabeth’s album, “Sonic Empath,” which was released Feb. 22. The musician, who was a psychology major at FLC, is currently on a mini-tour in Austin, Texas, and is also participating in the WWOOF program – World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms – where participants do work-trade on host farms.

For Cara Elizabeth, music is something that has always been a part of life.

“I’ve been doing music my whole life. Pretty much since I was 8, I started out with classical piano. Then I continued to go on to the guitar once I was in eighth grade,” she said. “I started writing on the piano when I was really young and I did some little demos with my buddy, who was more of a teacher and mentor, but he did some recording for me.”

“Back to Durango,” features Cara Elizabeth’s smooth, crystalline vocals over simple, pared-down instruments. It’s a song you’ll catch yourself whistling or humming under your breath. And it captures Cara Elizabeth’s self-described indie, singer-songwriter style with a heap of storytelling thrown in perfectly.

“The song is about love, but conflict with love. It’s about returning to Durango after leaving unexpectedly. … The song is basically about two different people being in love with me at the same time,” she said, laughing. "It’s about nostalgia, friendship, pain, but it also is about the pandemic, and it’s about the community because I wrote it to be an Americana/folk song, like the roots of Durango music.“

“Sonic Empath” is available on Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud and just about every other music platform.

katie@durangoherald.com