Rice worked on his album in London with composer David Arnold

Rice's album O beat the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Floetry and The Streets for the award.

Rice was presented with a prize for $5,000 (�2,985) for the win, after all the nominated musicians performed.

The Shortlist Prize recognises artists who have sold less than 500,000 copies of their album at time of nomination.

Rice's debut record was released in the US earlier in the year. The album was recorded and mixed by James Bond soundtracker David Arnold.

The other contenders this year were Interpol, Sigur Ros, Bright Eyes, Cat Power, The Black Keys and Cody Chesnutt.

Last year's prize was won by Nerd, an offshoot of the R&B production team The Neptunes, for their album In Search Of.

On-stage outburst

Icelandic band Sigur Ros, nominated this year for the album (), won the inaugural award in 2001 with Agaetus Byrjun.

Judges for this year's event included Coldplay singer Chris Martin, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme, film director Cameron Crowe and soul singer Macy Gray.

Bright Eyes, real name Conor Oberst, attacked US media conglomerate Clear Channel during his performance at the awards.

"The only bummer about tonight is that we're helping to earn money for Clear Channel," the Nebraskan singer-songwriter said.

Though his comments were met with cheers, one audience-member leapt on stage at the end of Oberst's performance and spat at him.

The event will be shown on MTV2 in the US on 25 October.