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Each year, Concert for a Cause’s annual album tops the local charts.

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Concert for a Cause’s annual album was released Thursday and includes 27 songs by local artists. It is available for $5 at Gallery of Sound stores.

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“At least for several weeks it’s usually a top seller in the area,” said producer Bret Alexander of The Badlees fame, whose song “Drive Back Home,” is the first track on the album, released Thursday.

It’s one of 27 songs on the compilation album, which comes out annually before the Concert for a Cause benefit at The Woodlands Inn & Resort, which was previous called a Concert for Karen.

This year, the event (set for April 22 at the Woodlands Inn & Resort) and album proceeds benefit United Way veterans programs that help local veterans and men and women serving overseas.

“Drive Back Home,” sung by Alexander, a Northeastern Pennsylvania native, is about never forgetting your roots and is a fitting lead song considering the cause it supports, event organizer Alan Stout said.

“We’ve been doing this concert for as long as we’ve been at war, so we’re a bit overdue in our effort to help the veterans,” Stout, who picks most of the music on the CD, said earlier this week.

The CD, available for $5 at all Gallery of Sound stores, is filled with songs by local artists, such as Scott Van Fossen, lead singer for Fighting Zero, who donated a large amount of money toward the album from the record label he owns, Anti Rust Records.

“This was a good opportunity to donate to a great cause,” he said. “The way my mind thinks is that if I can give something and let it multiply itself, then that’s an even better gift.”

Fighting Zero’s song “Drain” can be heard on the first disc in the two-disc compilation, and he describes it as “probably one of the deepest songs I’ve written when I listen to it and pick apart the emotion in it.”

“It’s a hard-hitting song, and that’s what I like best about it,” Van Fossen said. “It talks about passions in life just bringing you down to your knees every single day, and you keep on doing it because you love it.”

The song will be on Fighting Zero’s next extended-play album, “Beautiful War: Part 2,” which doesn’t have a release date yet.

“The writing and recording for the next album is there; it just all has to be completed,” Van Fossen said, mentioning he wanted to get some of his group’s new material out there.

Stout says giving local groups exposure is indeed another album goal.

“People might pick out this album and like their song the best and go out and buy their album,” he said.