By now, you’ve probably heard about Dark Was the Night, an all-star compilation due out Feb. 17 on 4AD that benefits the Red Hot Organization.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been absorbed in the collection’s 31 tracks, all exclusive to the project, which was curated/produced by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National. On the whole, compilations rarely stand up; usually, I cherry pick a song here or song there and I’m done. But Dark Was the Night is amazing in its breadth, in quantity and quality. (The artist lineup alone probably tells you something about the respect people have for the Dessner brothers and Red Hot.)

That said, if I had to pick three songs to choose for, say, an embeddable streaming widget, they would be the three below: Deep Blue Sea by Grizzly Bear; So Far Around the Bend by the National; and Tightrope by Yeasayer (which I discussed earlier). Thing is, I’m not even that huge of a Grizzly Bear or Yeasayer fan, but I’m enthralled by their tracks.

To learn more about Red Hot, read what executive director John Carlin had to write at Huffington Post, where you can also stream the entire compilation.

Visit the Dark Was the Night Web site for pre-order information.