The Star Wars: The Clone Wars soundtrack was released on August 12, 2008. The album features over 67 minutes of Kevin Kiner's score from the film, performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The soundtrack also begins with the main theme by John Williams.
Just as The Clone Wars is geared toward younger audiences than the previous films, the soundtrack is considered lighter than the previous scores by John Williams. The soundtrack uses many instruments never heard before in a Star Wars score, including synthesizers, electric guitars, erhus, duduks, ouds and taikos.
The average track runs about two minutes, with tracks from more climactic scenes running about four minutes.
The soundtrack included a Star Wars: The Clone Wars fold-out poster insert.
In a positive review of the soundtrack, Blogcritics writer Blake Matthews said Kevin Kiner uses new instruments to create a new sound to traditional Star Wars music that simultaneously remains familiar to the listener. Matthews said his favorite track was "Obi-Wan to the Rescue," but also particularly complimented some of the nightclub songs, which he described as in the style of 1940s jazzy and reminiscent of the cantina music in A New Hope. The Soundtrack Geek, an online music reviewer, said he was surprised a relatively unknown composer like Kiner would take the reins from veteran John Williams, and said the music does not live up to Williams' work. "The music isn't bad by all means, but to me it's not Star Wars. ... If you must have it in your collection because it's Star Wars, then fine, but if you love the music of Star Wars, then go listen to John Williams' excellent scores instead." Although he enjoyed certain tracks like "A Galaxy Divided" and "End Credits," he said other tracks like "Obi-Wan To The Rescue" sounded more like music from video games such as Quake.