The Red Hot Organization is a nonprofit devoted to battling AIDS by mobilizing pop culture. Among other things, this has meant a long series of music compilations featuring popular artists.
Most pop music compilations tend to be less exciting than they sound at first blush, but Red Hot’s have been unusually high quality, certainly well above the genre’s average.
The latest is Dark Was the Night, a compilation of cover songs and unreleased tracks from a who’s who of indie luminaries, from The National to Iron and Wine, The Decemberists, Feist, Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire, and on and on. It’s excellent.
Tough to pick a track, but what the hell, here’s The New Pornographers covering a song by Destroyer, a band led by Canadian artist Dan Bejar, also known as a prominent member of … The New Pornographers.
