The next big Ting?

The British duo's catchy tunes have lots of fans

Jules De Martino and Katie White are the dance-pop duo the Ting Tings.

The British dance-pop duo the Ting Tings are having the kind of year most musicians dream about: hit singles in the UK, a buzzed-about showcase at South by Southwest, a song in an iPod commercial (the new must-have calling card), and a sold-out US club tour, which stops on Thursday at Great Scott.

But the odds of Katie White and Jules De Martino even meeting - let alone forming a band - were daunting. And it's precisely the circuitous paths they've traveled that has brought the pair to their current happy moment.

White grew up on a farm outside of Manchester, obsessed with the Spice Girls and bored out of her mind. De Martino was raised in a London home, a collector of B-sides and a drum student at 13. The two crossed paths five years ago when White, then singing in an all-girl pop group she fondly recalls as "crap," passed through London and was introduced to De Martino, who wasn't much more gratified as frontman for a guitar band.

She was 19. He was 28. The pair stayed in touch via the London-Manchester band circuit and bonded over a budding affection for Portishead. Then - to make a long and extremely painful story short - De Martino moved to Manchester, they formed a campy neo-funk band called Dear Eskiimo with a DJ friend, and descended into record label hell. It's the usual tale of woe: The guys who signed them were sacked, the new staff didn't get their music, and the album languished on the shelf for ages before the band was finally dropped.

"We had so much frustration," says De Martino from Los Angeles, where the Ting Tings performed last week on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" "There are people worse off, but at the time it felt like the end of the world. When we started the Ting Tings we just wanted to relieve that frustration, and we did that by turning back to art and getting drunk and having parties. The idea wasn't to get into the studio and get a deal. It was get from December '06 to summer '07 without falling into a pit. Those parties are fundamental to where we are today."

You can hear the low-rent revelry in the Ting Tings' scrappy, effusive tunes. White and De Martino worked up the stripped-down chants that fill their debut album, "We Started Nothing," for a series of house parties at Manchester's Islington Mill, a derelict cotton factory that had been converted into an underground artists' collective where the pair lived. Built of new wave-y loops, bashing drums, cheeky guitars, and girlish vocals that tumble out like indie pep cheers, the songs stick like sugar. Art-school sugar.

The sound is minimalist and catchy, but performing the music live is fairly complex. At the Ting Tings' SXSW show in Austin, De Martino used 6-foot pedals to trigger dozens of different electronic loops - while playing drums and swapping guitars mid-song with White. The Ting Tings' blend of studied and spunky is truly a collaborative effort.

"Jules brings wisdom about songwriting to the table," says White, who was such a novice guitarist at their first gig she forgot to turn on her amp. "While I go 'Oh that's crap,' he can see it for what it might be. I'm really quite scruffy and blowing with the wind. He's chin in his drums for 10 hours. Together we match up."

Sony Music Label Group president Rob Stringer, a British executive who's been based in the United States for two years, believes that the Ting Tings can achieve the trans-Atlantic success that's eluded so many UK artists over the years.

"Some bands are miles away culturally," Stringer says. "I think the Ting Tings have elements of American music, the B-52's and Blondie and the White Stripes. Also, the trouble with British bands is they assume they can cover America in two weeks. Jules and Katie's work ethic is amazing. Word-of-mouth will be huge. This time last year I saw them play for 25 people in a muddy field on the 13th stage at Glastonbury, and it was so exciting I would bet every one of those people told 25 more people."

Meanwhile, the British press has already anointed the Ting Tings the most exciting new band since last week's most exciting new band, which is to say these are fickle days in the pop world. But the duo has a simple survival plan in place.

"We don't read anything," says De Martino.

"We're aware of the hype but we have no concept of cool," White explains. "The album title is a reminder to ourselves. We made these songs very honestly. We didn't set out to start anything."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/music/blog.