Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders

Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders are the dudes responsible for The Hurt Locker's soundtrack, which manages to be sometimes haunting, sometimes jarring...and mostly invisible.

What does that mean? Well, the film has a fairly documentary-like feel—and, in keeping with that vibe, the soundtrack kind of plays second fiddle (#musicpuns) to all the action and dialogue going on with the soldiers. Makes sense, right? You can't exactly give a film a documentary feel if you've got a Hans-Zimmer-does-Inception-style score thundering in the background.

That said, the music is very present, and it subtly plays up the moods of scenes. For example, during the EOD team's various missions, the music highlights the tension of everything that's happening. While Will is trying to defuse the bomb, and the other EOD guys are monitoring basically everyone else in the vicinity to make sure they aren't a threat, the score is often a kind of low, haunting hum, sometimes with some more jarring, higher-pitched notes thrown in at an especially tense-tastic moment.

And, of course, there are some Middle Eastern accents here and there, for obvious reasons.

We should also mention that there is a little heavy metal thrown in since Will is apparently a fan. We hear him listening to it in the barracks, and then a blaring metal track plays over his return to Iraq at the end. But those moments are more the exception than the rule.

The score is so subtle that you might even have trouble remembering if there was music at all in a particular scene. In some films, having a score that's "forgettable" might be a bad thing, but here it's a total bonus—it just shows how well the music melts into and complements what's happening. That must be why The Hurt Locker won Oscars for sound mixing and sound editing, eh? (It did not win for best score, but hey, you can't win them all.)

Oh, and fun fact: apparently, the score wasn't even released until well after the movie—like, until its DVD release (source). Just in case it comes up at your local trivia night.