Movie Soundtracks Go Solo

Movie soundtracks are going solo.

After years of assembling soundtracks with music from various artists and eras, filmmakers increasingly are using songs from single performers to underline the on-screen action.

Some of the most famous soundtracks are dominated by one artist or group, such as Simon & Garfunkel's work on The Graduate or Cat Stevens' songs for Harold and Maude.

More moviemakers are now trying that approach to make the music become a distinctive voice for the story. The latest example is the Steve Carell comedy Dan in Real Life, which uses acoustic songs by Sondre Lerche throughout its story of a widowed newspaper advice columnist who falls in love with the girlfriend of his younger brother.

Other recent films with single-artist soundtracks include the Sean Penn-directed Into the Wild, with music from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder; offbeat "anti-folk" songs from Kimya Dawson for the upcoming Juno; and this summer's Irish street-performer romance Once, which starred its musicians, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova