Astronomers have studied the set of interstellar absorption features known as the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) for nearly a century, characterizing them into families and using them as probes of local interstellar medium (ISM) conditions even while trying to understand their origin. Though most DIB studies have focused on the optical features, recent DIB identifications at infrared (IR) wavelengths -- where extinction by interstellar dust is significantly decreased -- provide us with tracers of ISM along heavily extincted, previously inaccessible sightlines. This talk will briefly summarize results from a project using the strongest of these IR DIBs (detected in more than 60,000 sightlines towards cool, distant giant stars observed as part of the SDSS-III/APOGEE survey) to characterize the large-scale distribution and properties of the Galactic ISM, including in the heavily reddened bulge and inner disk. The DIB absorption's tight correlation with foreground reddening makes it a powerful, independent probe of line-of-sight dust extinction. For the first time, we map the velocity field of a DIB on large scales and find that it displays the signature of the rotating Galactic disk. Three-dimensional modeling of the carrier distribution reveals not only large-scale gradients consistent with other ISM components, but also substructures that coincide with particular Galactic bulge and disk features. Finally, we find that features that are outliers in the distribution of DIB profile shapes may have an origin in circumstellar, rather than interstellar, environments along these particular sightlines, and the properties of these atypical features may contain clues towards identifying the currently-unknown carrier molecule of this DIB.