The Ting Tings Do A Little Dance Dance

Hometown: Manchester, England
Album: We Started Nothing
Band Members: Katie White, Jules De Martino
For Fans Of: Blondie, The Sounds, The Pipettes

Vocalist Katie White’s musical skills—like her hipster music and fashion tastes—are recent acquisitions. Upon forming The Ting Tings, she picked up drummer Jules De Martino’s old guitar for the first time, repeatedly hammered a D chord, and within a few hours had written the bouncy pop-punk anthem “Great DJ,” which opens the DIY duo’s eponymous Columbia debut.

When their last group, Dear Eskiimo, was unceremoniously dropped by its U.K. label, White and De Martino were depressed until they repaired to a local artists’ haven called the Islington Mill, where, White explains, “We were so sick of the business, we were just writing songs to make us feel good—we didn’t think anybody would wanna hear what we were doing.” Hanging out with the Mill’s 50-odd painters, potters and photographers introduced White to vintage rock eccentrics like Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, and pushed her into designing her own quirky stagewear. “Now I make all my own dresses,” the 23-year-old says. “And my favorite is one I made entirely out of doilies, the kind you put teapots on.”

So where was this kid before she started penning snarky singalongs like “That’s Not My Name” (a kiss-off to her ex imprint)? Living on a farm in the English countryside, listening to ho-hum Top 40 radio, and—believe it or not—ballroom dancing. “There was literally nothing else to do there,” she sighs. “So I used to sneak off after school and go dance all night. And it wasn’t a glamorous, show-bizzy dance school—it was at the local workingmen’s club, where you’d pay two pounds and get a lesson.”

She eventually got good enough to enter amateur competitions. But don’t ask White to hoof it through a Ting Tings gig. “Because I haven’t done any ballroom in years,” she confesses. “And it’s weird—even though I could dance as a kid, whenever you put me on a nightclub dancefloor I never know what to do with myself.”