Question on video playback window priority

[tstphnsn]

Hi.

I'm trying to find a media player that will play media but from the background and not become the top screen during playback.

I'm using lightroom to organize a large number of short video clips (bird songs with sonograms) and would like to be able to browse quickly to compare songs, etc.
Now when I play with VLC as default player the video plays fine (I'm only interested in the audio as LR show the relevant sonogram as a screenshot.) But when I try and go to the next file in LR VLC is "on top" and every time I have to switch back to LR.
I have unchecked the "keep on top" button but I'm still having to do that extra keystroke to get back to LR and would like to have the playback invisible to my work flow.

If anyone has any ideas on this (or another program that might be more flexible) that would be great.

Thanks,
Tom