by Andrew Munro on WordPress.org

Feature a download quickly from the publish/edit screen.
This plugin requires Easy Digital Downloads. It’s aimed at developers/clients who need to show a list of featured downloads.
Add the “featured” attribute to the existing [downloads] shortcode provided by Easy Digital Downloads:
[downloads featured="yes"]
The following code can be used to show the featured downloads anywhere in your theme:
echo do_shortcode( '[downloads featured="yes"]' );
You can include any other attributes supported by the [downloads] shortcode.
To build your own query using WP_Query you can use the meta_key parameter with a value of edd_feature_download. The following example builds a simple unordered list with all the featured downloads.
'download',
'meta_key' => 'edd_feature_download',
);
$featured_downloads = new WP_Query( $args );
if( $featured_downloads->have_posts() ) : ?>