The Ting Tings

Katie White was brought up in a music-mad family on the outskirts of Manchester. As a teenager she got together with two friends to form the girl band TKO (Total Knock Out). TKO was managed by Katie's father. The girls were quite successful, supporting a number of major acts, but despite the release of a popular internet single, they never managed to make it big time. In a similar start to a music career, Jules De Martino, who hails from London, began with the teenage band Babakoto, then in his early twenties moved on to the indie rock group Mojo Pin.

Katie and Jules met just as TKO were in the process of folding. The two got together with Simon Templeman to form the trio Dear Eskiimo. After managing to land a record deal with the major label Mercury Records, they were incredibly disappointed when their band was dumped just a year later. Katie and Jules continued performing live as a duo, renaming themselves The Ting Tings. To add some depth to the duo's sound, Katie decided she should play an instrument as well as sing, so she started playing the guitar.

When they uploaded a collection of their songs onto MySpace, their music went totally viral, as it was picked up and passed on by fans everywhere. Further exposure came when Apple used a Ting Tings song for an iPod ad campaign. The band was signed by Columbia Records, and their debut studio album We Started Nothing came out in 2008. Top tracks from the record include That's Not My Name and Shut Up and Let Me Go. Since the release of the album, the duo went on a major tour of the UK and US, including several festival appearances.