I would have to say Evanescence. They have a really great sound and they also have meaning behind their lyrics.

I like to go with music without vocals sometimes so I don't get the words jumbled in my brain. Explosions in the Sky, Eluvium and Four Tet hit the spot. Explosions also gets really epic, which can be a nice touch when things are really flowing.

None in particular, but I like listening to alternative rock when I'm writing.

Hmm I would have to think about this one... I'd probably say Beatles (that is what I wrote to during Nano), Christian music (no offense to anyone intended) as it is uplifting and motivating, and maybe one or two of my random mixes. Once I get into my writing world I really don't notice what is playing. I forget about the real world and get sucked into my plot. haha

Movie soundtracks of course!

Among some of my favorites are:
Amelie
Requiem for a Dream (the Kronos Quartet, who does all of Darren Aronofsky's movies... except The Wrestler *sad face*, is amazing)
Any movie by David Lynch
Juno
Edward Scissorhands
Being John Malkovich
Control

Or I'll just go on Rhapsody and have it play random soundtracks for me. But soundtracks are the way to go. They were made to go behind movies, right?

Sometimes I have issues with the songs not matching up with the scene, but that problem exists with any kind of music, eh?

Right now I'm loving The Subways. There's so much emotion and passion in all of their songs and their songs can range from acoustic/indie kind of stuff to screaming punk rock.

Juno Reactor used to be my favorite band to listen to while writing... But for SF I'm listening to Enigma instead. I've always found their music relaxing.

I can't really write while listening to a song with lyrics: I get so easily distracted. Especially if it's a screenplay, because I need to reread descriptions and dialogs and listening to lyrics make me lose sight of what I'm doing. As I wrote, I'm so easily distracted it's not funny...

I listen to a variety of stuff when I write, Rilo Kiley, R.E.M., M.I.A. and since my script is set in the mid-1980s, I'm planning on listening to a ton of 80s music too XD

Some of my favorites are Flyleaf, Nightwish, Evanescence, Paramore, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin and Meg & Dia.
I've been liking the sound of Bullet For My Valentine lately, too. Their songs tend to have a nice beat, and it feels like it would be good for script writing. (All These Things I Hate in particular.)

Cocteau Twins and Dirty Projectors get me typing steadily, Memory Cassette and Weird Tapes maintain the flow, and Shangri Las/Everly Brothers/Polaris/Fleetwood Mac/Peter, Paul, and Mary help me burn the midnight oil. When I start to sound whack, I turn to MF Doom and A Tribe Called Quest. When emotions run high - both on the page and off - Sleep and Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti exhort me (and my characters) to take no quarter. When all is calm, I look to Pete Seeger, Neko Case, and Buddy Holly.

When all else fails: Talking Heads.

Cocteau Twins == excellent for writing. I don't think I was listening to them yet when I did Screnzy last year, but I'll probably include them in my playlists this year. :)

I like music that puts me in a good mood when I'm writing. I love listening to Weird Al, the Phenomenauts, Elvis, and listening to 'Shout' by the Isley Brothers gets me going. I like Christina Sturmer, Bowling For Soup, and Aural Vampire. Something fast paced to type to.

What albums do you like best? I'm most partial to Treasure, but Victorialand, being a veritable dreamscape, is best for my focus, though 'Lazy Calm' is always apt to make me nod off mid paragraph! Whenever that happens, though, I usually queue up 'Pink Orange Red' and 'Glass Candle Grenades' to bring me back (at least halfway)!

Forgot some! Roy Orbison makes writing those sentimental scenes effortless, Alison Krauss and Union Station makes every stage of the effort a downslow pleasure, and the Carter Family inspires me to spin a yarn in that folksy porch settlin' Uncle Remus manner.

Not to be forgotten, of course, are Martin Denny's Exotica and '60s Jobim Bossa Nova, both of which guided me through last year's Screnzy!

Juno Reactor!

Man, haven't listened to them in awhile. They're great.

I listen to soundtracks like LOTR, Star Wars, Star Trek, Chronicles of Narnia, Atlantis, The Abyss, Pirates of the Caribbean and stuff by The Chemical Brothers, Moby and The Crystal Method to get into a writing mood, then turn it off to write.

Really chill deep and tech house.

Late Night Alumni, Sebastien Leger, Shahrokh Sound of K, and too many others to list =/

I'm afraid I only have two- Garlands and Treasure. I used to subscribe to emusic, and I think I was only able to download two of their albums that month because of a song number limit. Then I stopped subscribing to emusic, and I hadn't thought to look for any more of their albums after that. I really should, though. Of the two I have heard, I prefer Treasure.

I'm all about acoustic songs - really help me stay motivated to write. Bob Dylan is #1 on the list. :)

For me, it depends on the characters I've writing about. This year, it seems to be Duffy and Celine Dion. A lot of the songs on my new Celine Dion CD, as I hear them, I think, "Oh, that fits [this character or situation] so perfectly!" Duffy... my main character has a similar sounding singing voice. >_<

Death toll: 7 named, about 181 unnamed

I pretty much write to music that fits the atmosphere of what I'm writing. I'm generally a darker sort of writer and with the script I'm writing this year it's probably along the lines of weird and/or foreign bands: Dir En Grey, NIN, My Chemical Romance, Avenged Sevenfold, Ozzy Osbourne, BUCK-TICK, Bjork, Malice Mizer, etc.

My script is gonna be WEIRD. :P

If I were writing anything with confused, archetypal teenagers (a'la John Hughes), I'd definitely be listening to M83. Anyone heard their (or his?) most recent record, Saturdays = Youth?

I have a lot of favourite bands, but what I listen to mainly while writing is Simple Plan. Their music is amazing, and it totally inspires me to write. I've also pretty much fallen in love with the song Wings of a Butterfly, by HIM, and Numb, by Linkin Park.
Once I've listened to those a few times on repeat, I love My Chemical Romance, bayside, hawthorne heights, Skillet, and Lostprophets.

Air is good for me. Nice ambient sounds.

I listen to a lot of alternative rock and grunge like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Blind Melon, and Metric. I particularly like Metric when I'm working on creative stuff, because they have a good blend of exciting and relaxing music. Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton is good for relaxing too, if you can find it.

Goblin remains # 1 to write and design to. They so thoroughly transport me any and everywhere.

Bands:

Bolt Thrower
The Absence
Mastodon
Hail of Bullets

I'm sorry, I haven't heard anything by them, so I'm in no position to judge, but just from the titles, to me at least, those sound like horrible horrible bands. But then GONARCH is a pretty good band.

usually i like classical or jazz music. (i'm a classical tenor sax player who just happens to be playing in jazz band next year, give me a break!)
but it helps when i'm feeling wordy and don't need lyrics lagging me down.

then again i also listen to a lot of other things. my first instinct was going to be the beatles, but i still lean more towards a nada surf/augustana playlist.
(:

Usually I only listen to soundtracks while I'm writing, but this time it had to be
30 seconds to mars
because I got the idea for my screenplay while listening to "from yesterday". Even though it has nothing to do with the song...

I usually listen to The Decemberists a lot when I'm writing (or at any other time, for that matter). Most years for SF and NaNo I make an iTunes playlist will all my songs that I think really fit the mood or a particular scene I really want to get to, so the actual song choice changes all the time depending on what I'm writing, but at least a few of their songs always make the list.

This year, though, I think I might go for more for scores than songs, though. That kind of sweeping, majestic sound seems to fit what of I'm thinking of now. I keep getting the music from Battlestar Galactica stuck in my head when I think of my script (although I'm sure that with the show ending TOMORROW the music will just end up distracting me for a while). Deep and foreboding is good for this April.

The Decemberists, Gogol Bordello, Flogging Molly, The Brunettes, Erin McCarley, Dido, Imogen Heap, Deep Forest, The A-B Theory, Rufus Wainwright...

Indie bands with awesome lyrics and not TOO distracting music (okay, so Flogging Molly is pretty distracting, but whatever...) are basically what works for me.

The Decemberists are really great with lyrics. It's fun to take lines from their songs and make them fit into the story I'm writing. ie "Meet me on my vast veranda" or "there are powerlines in my bloodlines" or "and so our heroine retreats into the taiga".

It's a challenge. :D

Same with The Brunettes lyrics. Trying to fit "when we're in the spaceship, I know it must be kismet", or "hair kisses and hair architecture" into a novel or screenplay is a piece of work indeed.

t.A.t.U.'s one of my favorite bands to write to too. It's where I got a big part of my story, even though the atmosphere isn't the same at all. I'm writing a massacre pretty much to Russian pop techno...hah!

My girlfriend loves t.A.t.U as well, so I tend to listen to that when we are writing together. on my own, I either stick an artist on shuffle and repeat if I know I want to write under a certain mood (something like coldplay/athelete for mellow writing, something faster for action...etc.)or do the same to my entire library...although seeing as I have not yet uploaded much music to my new lappy, I guess my choices will be limited.