It's nothing you'll see on Shameless, but - whisper it - Salford has an artsy underside that is shaping up to be a Northern variant on Warhol's early Factory. Based in a former disused Mill and shrouded by council High Rises, its first breakout stars have emerged. Welcome, if you will, The Ting Tings — the Sonny and Cher of Salford Precinct for the Noughties.

The Ting Tings are Jules de Martino and Katie White. They met when she was just out of being a Wigan school-girl and bonded over a shared ambition to rock the foundations of pop music.

Together, Jules and Katie have configured a sound that represents the pure heart of British pop. Driven by personality, unstoppable momentum, friendship and the love of great pop music - however stylised it arrives - The Ting Tings learnt to forget the attention to detail that they had slaved over in their previous band Dear Eskiimo and drove their new beast on raw adrenaline. It is littered through their sensational debut album, a record that grips on first listen and refuses to dislodge from the brain. Snappy choruses trade off against angular guitar work, whipsmart drumming and a succession of loops that they create live with the use of delay pedals. Half redolent of a thrusting girlband schooled at CBGBs and half informed by a post modern desire to break the codes of manufactured pop, their sound is immediately identifiable and purposefully perky.

If The Ting Tings debut album sounds like the sound of 2008, then many agree. Touted as a must-hear by industry symposiums and kids on the corner of urban High Streets alike, it is live that the whole enterprise takes on its full three dimensions. Unsurprisingly, they were chosen to open The annual NME new music tour at the beginning of 2008. The competition was duly sleighed by the pair that started making music for no-one but themselves.