IN the music video that kicks off “Portlandia,” a new comedy series making its debut Jan. 21 on IFC, Fred Armisen walks the streets of Portland, Ore., singing to a flat, synthesized soundtrack and praising the city as a flannel-clad slacker’s paradise where “young people go to retire.” As Mr. Armisen marches along the Willamette River waterfront, he is joined by stylish women wearing vintage eyeglasses, bearded men in leather jackets, circus clowns and finally by his co-star, Carrie Brownstein, who arrives with several facial piercings.

This is when Mr. Armisen halts the impromptu parade and warns Ms. Brownstein that her look is “a little San Francisco,” relieving her of a nose ring and a pair of earrings before allowing the march to proceed.

It is always a risky proposition when anyone tries to codify the spirit of a proudly independent, nonconformist scene. (And in this case Mr. Armisen, a nine-season veteran of “Saturday Night Live” and resident of New York would seem to have less of a claim to it than Ms. Brownstein, a guitarist and singer from the Portland rock band Sleater-Kinney, which broke up in 2006.)

But together Mr. Armisen and Ms. Brownstein, two guileless if unlikely collaborators, hope they possess enough street cred to serve as ambassadors of Portland’s counterculture and to present their version of it, in “Portlandia,” to an audience beyond the Pacific Northwest.