A general expression for the distortion rate function (DRF) of cyclostationary Gaussian processes in terms of their spectral properties is derived. This expression can be seen as the result of orthogonalization over the different components in the polyphase decomposition of the process. We use this expression to derive, in a closed form, the DRF of several cyclostationary processes arising in practice. We first consider the DRF of a combined sampling and source coding problem. It is known that the optimal coding strategy for this problem involves source coding applied to a signal with the same structure as one resulting from pulse amplitude modulation (PAM). Since a PAM-modulated signal is cyclostationary, our DRF expression can be used to solve for the minimal distortion in the combined sampling and source coding problem. We also analyze in more detail the DRF of a source with the same structure as a PAM-modulated signal, and show that it is obtained by reverse waterfilling over an expression that depends on the energy of the pulse and the baseband process modulated to obtain the PAM signal. This result is then used to study the information content of a PAM-modulated signal as a function of its symbol time relative to the bandwidth of the underlying baseband process. In addition, we also study the DRF of sources with an amplitude-modulation structure, and show that the DRF of a narrow-band Gaussian stationary process modulated by either a deterministic or a random phase sine-wave equals the DRF of the baseband process.