The Ting Tings: Quirky Beautiful

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Another typical day of emailing colleagues and friends when I receive a message with this send off: I'm so into the Ting Tings right now.

Crazily, guess what was playing on my laptop stereo at that exact moment?

I bet you guessed the Ting Tings.

Here's what happened: Just for shizz and giggles, two friends from the music scene started making sweet music together about a year ago. When they began jumping on stage at Manchester's Islington Mill, everybody went nuts over it.

First of all, what you have to understand is that the Islington Mill is a derelict cotton mill from the Industrial Revolution that's been converted into an underground artist's collective. That detail makes the story insanely cooler.

The due consists of Katie White and Jules De Martino. Both work vocals. While she plays guitar and bass drum, he bangs the electronics - and his own set of drums. Together, We're quite percussive, Jules notes.

Quite true! And one of the elements of the band that makes listening to them so engaging and delightful.

The creative hodgepodge of sounds can perhaps be attributed in part to Jules' mom and dad. My parents had a great record collection, he says on the band's web site. The classics: Beatles, Elvis, etc. My approach to music was very strange. My mum said that I'd always listen to the B-sides, I was in love with what was going on with the B-sides. Musically, I was into production and the B-sides always had something more experimental, not necessarily driven by the hits. I was attracted to that. The flipside of a single was usually the strongest track.

Unconventional, eclectic, artistic and definitely worth getting into, the Ting Tings are currently on the road and have just released their debut album, We Started Nothing.