NPR Music to offer sneak listens of Camera Obscurra, St. Vincent and Jason Lytle's upcoming releases

This month, the voices of a chamber-pop Scottish sextet, tones from a multi-instrumental singer-songwriter and a beautifully orchestrated blend of acoustic and electronic harmonies will all be available for streaming at NPR Music, weeks before scheduled release dates. NPR Music – www.NPR.org/music – is offering exclusive previews of three new albums throughout April and into May: Camera Obscura’s My Maudlin Career, St. Vincent’s Actor and Jason Lytle’s Yours Truly, The Commuter.

The pre-release streams are part of NPR Music’s expanding “Exclusive First Listen” series, which offers free, live streaming of select albums ahead of their release dates. The entire series is available at: www.NPR.org/firstlisten

First up is Camera Obscura’s My Maudlin Career, which will be available at NPR Music from April 13 at 11:59PM (ET) through April 20, the album’s scheduled release date. While the latest release features what NPR Music calls “trademarks of the band's sound,” a delightful blend of horns, harmonies and shining rhythms, the band takes a new step into darker, more intense themes on its fourth record. The new territory is a success, though, with NPR Music proclaiming it the band’s “most ambitious album to date,” and Obscura’s lead singer Tracyanne Campbell concluding, “I truly believe it's the best we've done so far."

Annie Clark, known as St. Vincent, releases her second album – Actor – this May. Having played guitar for Sufjan Steven’s traveling band and recorded with The Polyphonic Spree, the 23-year-old proves she can hold her own once more. Clark takes listeners on a captivating trip, combining her voice with those of Hideaki Aomori and Alex Soppthe and the sounds of seven different instruments. Hear the entire album, a week before its release date, starting April 20, 2009 at 11:59 PM ET at: www.NPR.org/firstlisten

The creative genius behind the former rock band Grandaddy, Jason Lytle picks up where the band left off with his first solo album, Yours Truly, The Commuter. NPR Music will stream the entire album starting May 4, 2009 at 11:59 PM ET. Audiences can also watch Lytle perform a track from the upcoming album, recorded for NPR Music in March at South by Southwest: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102351673

Complete track listings and album information are available at NPR Music, where there are also extensive archives of songs, interviews and reviews of Camera Obscura, St. Vincent and Jason Lytle. NPR Music introduced its “First Listen” series last year, when the site offered its first pre-release album stream: Bob Dylan’s 2-CD set Tell Tale Signs, followed by Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain and an album from Paul McCartney’s project The Fireman. The impact was tremendous, with hundreds of thousands of webcasts of the albums and individual songs.

The “Exclusive First Listen” series is one feature of NPR Music, a free, multimedia music discovery Web site at www.NPR.org/music The site offers content from NPR and 12 NPR Member public radio stations, including live performances, studio sessions, first listens to new albums, interviews, reviews and blogs. The site’s continuously expanding sections are dedicated to rock/pop/folk, classical, jazz/blues, world and urban music. NPR Music culls from NPR’s and the stations’ extensive music archives to present thousands of features; more than 250 new features are added to the site every month.