As one of Britain's latest indie-pop exports, the Ting Tings have managed to propel past their U.K. counterparts with the help of a short yet memorable television commercial. Earlier this year, Apple featured the group's song 'Shut Up and Let Me Go' in one of its psychedelic iPod ads, causing couch potatoes everywhere to bop their heads and tap their feet.

For those unfamiliar with the performers behind the infectious song, the Ting Tings are actually a duo composed of Jules De Martino (drums, guitar, vocals) and Katie White (vocals, guitar, bass drum). But with the crafty use of loop pedals, the energetic pair are able to deliver their boisterous, pop-tinged sound during live performances.

Despite the sudden success they have received, the Ting Tings look to remain grounded, which is one of the reasons they titled their debut album 'We Started Nothing.' AOL sat with De Martino and White to find out the story behind their onomatopoeic band name and what they really think of America.

AOL: How do two people make all that noise?

JULES: Well, we play hard, and we also use loop pedals. I've got five on my kit on the floor, Katie's got a couple in front of her, and we use loops so we have keyboard sounds and synths and weird noise. We just layer them. So we start playing the drums and guitar, and we just keep bringing in loops, so they play with us like they're live. There's no kind of playback or time code or anything. And sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes [we] hit the wrong one and we cut out and we just play guitar and drums on gigs, and other times they work really well. The more you put on more layers, the bigger the sound, so a lot of that track gets bigger and bigger towards the end.

KATIE: It's quite interesting as well, though, 'cause some of the songs are broken down as well, and I think just 'cause we have so much energy onstage and we really put everything into it, people feel it's thicker than what it actually is.

AOL: What is the origin of the Ting Tings? Where did you get your name?

KATIE: We got our name from a girl that I used to work with called Ting Ting. She told me that it meant an old bandstand in a park in Chinese Mandarin. And then we Googled it and found that it was the sound of innovation on an open mind. So when you get an idea, it goes like ...

JULES: "Ding!"

KATIE: It's quite onomatopoeic, and you know we're quite percussive and [have] cowbell when we play live, so we liked it. We just found out that it means something quite rude in Japan, though.

JULES: The name means a really cute term for, you know, a man's manhood. It's not even like a brutal, macho term. It's like a, I don't know what you say here, like a kind of cute little ...

KATIE: ... wiener. I don't know. That's what it means in Japan.

AOL: What are some of the hurdles that you've faced in breaking into America?

KATIE: Flying. We're not great fliers, but we've had to quickly get used to it. We've been in a different city every day flying, so that's one hurdle. I think it's been a really good reaction. It's a big place, and you know you're just scratching the surface with the tours that we've done, but the reaction's been really good. We feel like we're on a holiday, getting to play shows every night.

AOL: If you guys were to score a film, what director would you want to work with, and why?

KATIE: Stephen Chow -- he directed 'Kung Fu Hustle.' We got obsessed with that film, and it inspired our video that we just made. We did some -- a bit of kung fu -- in it because we were so inspired by his film. So yeah, we'd love to do something like that. It's really weird as well 'cause we're big fans of his, and then somebody's done a mash-up thing of our video of 'That's Not My Name' [with] some scenes out of 'Kung Fu Hustle.' It's a complete fluke, and it was so nice to see it. It's good.

AOL: What inspired you guys to write 'That's Not My Name'?

JULES: Well, we didn't know what we were writing at the time. But for four or five months after recording the track, listening back to it, we realized that we kind of were writing about what we've been though before. We were both in a band before this, with more members and stuff, and it went really, badly wrong being signed to a label that was changing their personnel. So we got caught in that clich� of [being] stuck on the shelf, not putting records out, not doing anything. When we wrote that, it was like we felt really invisible. We'd been dumped by our label, no one was picking up the phone, we lost a lot of friends, no one wanted to seem to know us at all. Also, when Katie was singing the chorus, I remember Katie had quite a lot to say from a girl's point of view being signed. And again, no one [was] remembering her name, just treating her kind of [like] a bit contemporary.

KATIE: Yeah, just the way people can preach at you and almost pigeonhole you. They'll sort of write you off before they even know you or listen to what you do or anything. We didn't realize how frustrated we were until our friends pointed [it] out and [were] like, "God, you're songs are really frustrated." And I think because we're big fans of pop music and we wanted to feel good at the time, we made the songs feel really uplifting, but the lyrics are quite honest and pissed off.

AOL: Explain the title of the album.

JULES: We were about seven tracks into the album when we started to get some press and radio picking up on the band [in the U.K.], and there was this whole thing [of] people saying, "They're going to be the biggest thing in 2008. They're the coolest kids in town." Starting this band, we never set out to star in it. We never thought there was going to be any direction at all. We were just doing parties, running parties ourselves [and] downing a bit of cash and beer. And when these people started writing about the band, we were kind of like, these people didn't want to talk to you last week, and now everyone's calling you "the coolest thing." So we wrote the song to keep ourselves grounded, really -- just reminding ourselves that, you know, this is what we do. This is just music. We hadn't started this for any fad or for anything else but self-satisfaction, and that's really where the song comes from, I think.

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