St. Vincent's (aka Annie Clark) 2007 debut 'Marry Me' was an indie success, with the title being a well documented ode to an 'Arrested Development' line. She's slated to return this spring with another nod to the more visual arts with 'Actor.' But don't expect any tales of heroics. "Mainly I was just concerned with character in dramatic form and writing about losers," Clark tells Spinner. "A good story isn't about a winner, winning. Where's the conflict?"

To convey these sentiments, Clark approached writing the music for 'Actor' around certain human emotions that could be conveyed through a bevy of new instruments for her. "I even approached the instruments that I used as sort of having a character -- the woodwinds were this pastoral thing that reminded me of Disney films and Woody Allen films," she says. "The strings were sort of panic attacks, and the guitars came to be this vicious monster that comes out of nowhere every once in awhile."

That said, it'd be tempting to characterize 'Actor' as some sort of concept album, where Clark takes listeners through a structured narrative found in movies. Not so. "My goal was to not dress up everything in metaphor or cleverness exactly," she explains. "Be more cinematic and juxtaposing images to tell a story -- not impose a narrative as much. More imply than impose."

Compared to 'Marry Me,' Clark also describes her writing process this time as "backwards" -- meaning she started with arrangements and worked the melodies and words in later. "I started thinking of it as a film score," she says. "I was hoping to have it feel melodically and musically composed as one body of work. That consistency is just really important to me at this time. So it was decidedly a challenge to go from this really ornate, beautiful piece of music that I was really excited about, and go "oh wait, by the way, you need to make these pop songs."

St. Vincent will return to the stage this spring for a headlining tour beginning on May 19th in Somerville, Massachusetts.