NEW YORK (Billboard) - Most sidemen dream of the day when they can step into the spotlight. But not Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood (news).

"There doesn't seem to be a point in doing a bad indie album with me trying to sing on top," he says with a chuckle. "That would be terrible for everybody."

Instead, for his first outing away from the British band, he chose to score indie documentary "Bodysong."

Out Feb. 24 on Capitol, the album pushes beyond Radiohead's most experimental leanings with moody electronica and string-laden instrumentals and only two tracks that feature guitar. For much of the score, Greenwood collaborated with the Emperor String Quartet.

Capitol opted not to promote the project as a solo album and will not sticker it in stores as a Radiohead tie-in.

"It's important to understand that this is the score to a film, not a Jonny Greenwood solo album," VP of global marketing Rob Gordon says.

But the label is taking advantage of Greenwood's built-in fan base. "Since the album has been available since November as an import, we wanted to give fans a chance for something unique, and a limited number of seven-inch vinyl records with B-sides will be available at indie stores."

Capitol's Web site hosts a dedicated "Bodysong" page offering an e-card and screensaver, while ifilm.com is featuring the film's trailer. Label personnel have been out in full force "at Sundance, art-house theaters and concerts," Gordon says.

A deal is being finalized for the movie, which is directed by Simon Pummell and produced by Hot Property Films, to screen on college campuses and in theaters in April or May. The showings will lead up to Radiohead's lone 2004 U.S. concert appearance, May 1 at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif.

To accompany the film's dialogue-free, rapid-fire visual tour of the human experience, which compiles archival images, Greenwood veered far from the conventional scoring path.

"A normal film tends to have two or three melodies repeated over and over," he says. "So one of the hardest parts was knowing you couldn't have the same themes or music coming back in after half an hour, because the whole idea of the film is that there is no repetition."

Reuters/Billboard