Boy/girl duos are all the rage these days. With the likes of Blood Red Shoes, Crystal Castles and John and Jehn all proving they’re more than willing to pick up where Jack and
Meg left off, trendy indie twosomes were quite literally all over the gaff… and the air was thick with speculation about who was shagging who, who was related and who was - most boringly - ‘just good friends’.

But with one of the most infectious songs of the year - in the single ‘That’s Not My Name’ - it was Manchester two-piece The Ting Tings that emerged late on as perhaps our favourite indie couple. Having come close to a major deal with previous band Dear Eskimo, drummer Jules De Martino and singer Katie White formed The Tings Tings, played four gigs in their living room and found themselves at Glastonbury - hotly tipped as the next big ting!

“We got signed to Mercury,” says White, about the old band. “But then the two MDs who signed us got sacked within a couple of weeks, then two new ones came along and slowly the whole structure of the label shifted.

“It all changed before we knew where we were and we never even had a chance to get a record out. Basically we got spat out of the music industry before we had a chance. We didn’t even have a record to show for it - just a big debt collector at the door.

“Jules was like ‘I’m never gonna be in another band ever again‘. He had just had enough you know. He was having a horrible time. But we had written songs together in our band and the other member had gone on and got on with her life and I was like ‘I think we should carry on writing songs together’ you know.”

Having lost their previous member (Dear Eskimo was a three-piece) the now stripped-down pair wrote two songs and decided to play them in their front room - to some of the other 40 artists they lived with at Islington Mill in Salford.

“Twenty-five people turned up to the first show,” I’m told. “We invited everyone, put on a DJ, showed some art on the walls and played our two songs. We played for like half an hour - they were the extended versions.

“The second gig 50 people showed up, then it just went totally insane. We weren’t well-connected people or anything. We weren’t pulling any favours in, but it just went crazy. Our MySpace went completely mad… People were getting hold of us from all over the world.”

The Ting Tings fifth date was Glastonbury. From there, what had caused the stir in the front room at Islington Mill got noticed on a larger scale - the energy of The Ting Tings’ live show.

Despite the fact there’s only two of them, White and De Martino erupt on stage. De Martino’s explosive drumming combined with White’s vocals and guitar somehow fill the void that a bass player or other band members might provide. Pedals are used to record vocal and drum loops as they are sung and played which then work as layers over the live sound.

White is adamant the integrity of the band would be compromised by the presence of hired help…

“It’s always just us two on stage,” she says. “People are always asking us if we use other people and I find it really weird that we might just bring in hired musicians. I actually can’t think of anything worse than just getting a load of people in and paying them to play along to music that they didn’t even create.

“I’ve seen a lot of other bands do that recently - you know there’s like two core members to the band and then these ten other people turn up - and it’s all supposed to be really sincere but it‘s not. We just felt like to us it’s really important that we do it all ourselves.”

But does the lack of other band members mean the sound will never be as big as a four piece? “It’s all about our performance and our energy and the way we bounce off each other,” says White. “I think when there’s two people on stage you have to put so much energy in to make it work, otherwise it just looks stale and flat.

“So I think you tend to get people being really quite extreme and really putting everything into it in two-pieces because they have to. It’s all or nothing otherwise it’s shit. I think that’s what I like and think is so good about having just two people in a band.

“You see it in our shows. We either do a gig and put so much energy into the performance that afterwards we faint on the floor or we just don’t bother doing the gig at all. It’s all or nothing.”

The Ting Tings’ independent ethic doesn’t stop there. The debut album, We Started Nothing (out 19 May), is literally all their own work. Self produced and recorded, and with all the art work done by the band, the only outside input is a brass section on the last of the album’s 10 tracks (“some guys came in with saxophones”).

The singer describes the record as a pop album… “Real good, home-made pop,” she says, “with some more technical and experimental stuff and a real liveness (sic) to the sound.”
And though she says that both Ting Ting members have a love of good pop music, she refutes claims that the band are nothing more than a chart act - they have been compared to Girls Aloud.

“I grew up listening to pop music,” she says. “When I was young it was Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys and I grew up listening to that sort of stuff. We both like catchy music. I can’t understand songs that don’t have catchy choruses and hooks.

“We’re not just a pop band though. We have done everything ourselves. We’ve been very tenacious about that. We are not manufactured… We are not like a pop band in that way at all.”

Anyone who seen them live would agree. And by the way… they’re ‘just good friends’.