The Juno Soundtrack, is, quite appropriately, like the movie in many ways: off-beat, strange, memorable and, above all, charming. Both the CD and the movie open with the folksy song “All I Want Is You,” a simply wrought harmonica and guitar piece sung by Barry Louis Parker, a well-known songwriter and performer of children’s music. The effortlessly simple, quaint love ballad sounds as if it came straight from Uncle Appalachia Joe, sung on his porch, crocodiles swimming past in the nearby bayou. As the opening credits of the movie roll, Juno, played by Ellen Page, downs the dregs of a gallon Sunny D to make herself pee for a pregnancy test as Parker sings, “If you were a wink, I’d be a nod/ if you were a seed, well I’d be a pod/ if you were a floor I’d want to be the rug/ and if you were a kiss I know I’d be a hug.”

The CD combines the folk of Parker with rock songs from old favorites, like Buddy Holly’s sweet 1950’s love song “Dearest” and the British pop/rock band The Kinks’s gem of a song, “A Well Respected Man,” and the Beatles-Dylan-esque “All The Young Dudes” by Mott the Hoople. The Velvet Underground sing the unusual folk-turned-rock song “I’m Sticking With You,” which starts as a piano and a single, high and wavering falsetto singing, “I’m sticking with you, because I’m made out of glue/ anything that you might do, I’m gunna do too.” Slowly, harmonies, guitar, drums are layered as the song — and the movie, for that matter — build to a full and moving end.

The CD sprinkles in a handful of contemporary songs to the folk and old-rock mix, including pieces from the alt-rock band Sonic Youth, the folksy-blues one-woman band Cat Power and the indie group Belle and Sebastian.

The new and old folk/rock songs are interspersed with six tracks from Kimya Dawson, a low-profile, indie/folk/punk singer, whose sparse guitar backs up her simple, repeated melodies and oft-peculiar lyrics. Dawson is also part of the band The Moldy Peaches, which hasn’t produced music since 2004, but whose perfectly strange song, “Anyone Else But You,” is featured in the movie and then sung by Juno’s co-stars Michael Cera and Ellen Page in the closing scene of the film. (The actors’ rendition is included as the last song on the CD.) In the bizarre but endearingly loving song, The Peaches sing, “Here is the church and here is the steeple, we sure are cute for two ugly people/ I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else, but you.”

Juno director Jason Reitman credits Page with shaping the soundtrack. In a recent interview, he said, “At one point, I asked Ellen Page before we started shooting, ‘What do you think Juno listens to?’ And she said ‘The Moldy Peaches.’” Through The Moldy Peaches, Reitman learned of Dawson, whose solo material Reitman also included on the soundtrack. Aside from recording two short, two-chord instrumentrals for the soundtrack, Dawson didn’t write any music specifically for the movie. On her blog, she writes, “And when people were coming up to me telling me I did a great job [on the soundtrack] it felt weird because I didn’t do a job. I wrote a bunch of crap when my heart was hurting.”

Between Dawson’s simple, heartfelt compositions, some golden oldies, and a dash of current indie-pop-rock, the Juno Sountrack is of the best types of compilations — one that you wouldn’t and probably couldn’t create yourself, one that introduces you to new songs, artists and possibly genres. The Juno Soundtrack is currently the number one selling album on iTunes, and although it’s probably just peculiar enough not to achieve the fame and ubiquity of the “Garden State” or “O Brother, Where Art Thou” soundtracks, its quirky and delightful folk-meets-rock-and-does-love feel will hopefully make it a soundtrack cult classic.

Download: “Anyone Else But You” by The Moldy Peaches, “A Well Respected Man” by The Kinks, and “All I Want Is You” by Barry Louis Polisar