When MC Ninja answered an ad from The Go! Team [ tickets ], which was seeking an old-school hip-hop rapper, she had no idea it would be a permanent position--nor was she sure she wanted it to be.

Ninja was pursuing her own music, and did not quite get The Go! Team, an English group that has been described as a cross between Sonic Youth and the Jackson 5.

"I replied with an e-mail to Ian [Parton, band leader], and he sent me a CD with some songs to listen to. I thought, 'What the hell is this?' I thought it was crazy. I had no idea what was going on," Ninja said via telephone from Norwich, England.

"He wanted me to write lyrics to it. I just couldn't see where my lyrics would go in. I wrote something to it and met up with the rest of The Go! Team, because none of us knew each other. We had to play our first gig in front of 2,000 people in Sweden. I had no idea I was joining a band. I kept accepting calls every week to do another show, another show, another show because I thought the shows that we were doing were going really well," she added.

After about 10 months, Ninja's manager asked her about her status in the band.

"And I said, 'Oh right. I'm in a band.' I didn't know. No one ever said to me, 'Do you want to join this band?' They just kept calling and saying, 'We have a show over here, do you want to do it?' I'd say, 'Yeah.' 'We have a show over there.' 'Do you want to do it?' I'd say, 'Yeah.'"

In 2004, The Go! Team released "Thunder, Lightning, Strike," which melds two drum kits, horn samples, harmonica, guitarists, turntables, bass, xylophones and keyboards. It was re-released in 2005. Next week, the group will make its second appearance at the SXSW music festival in Austin, TX, before embarking on a brief US stint.

liveDaily: Are you looking forward to playing South by Southwest?

MC Ninja: Definitely. We had a really good time last year. It was flattering that so many people tried to see us--even though [many] didn't get to. We hope more of those people get to see us, rather than just industry people

Were you surprised by the good response you received?

Yeah, definitely. I have no idea how that happened. We're a young band, really unknown. I have no idea why everybody wanted to see us. But it doesn't matter. They did.

Have you started working on a new album?

Not yet. We haven't had any time. We've just been touring, touring, touring. I think we'll have some time off. After this UK tour, which is three weeks long, we do the States and then we should have some time off in May. Ian wrote the [first] album. Hopefully he can get to making more songs, and hopefully beginning of next year [we'll have an album], but we'll have to see.

Is it tiresome to continue playing songs from "Thunder, Lightning, Strike," which was originally released September 2004?

You'd think so. But we're still having fun playing songs that we have now. Obviously, we can't keep playing them. But it's hard to write new stuff when you're on the road all the time. We're such an unknown band--we haven't spent any money on advertising or marketing or anything like that like a lot of bands do. It was released on an independent label. We re-released it last September, October, so it feels like--to some people--the album has been out for a couple years. For some people, the album's only been out a couple of months. So a few more people know about us, really.

Why do you think you've fared so well without a major marketing campaign?

I think it's word of mouth, and the Internet as well. Also, we try to do really good live shows. I think that people come to see the live shows. Also, the songs are just spreading around in all the music underground. People hear the songs and again tell their friends, so it really a genuine fanbase, rather than fans who just listen to us because we're on the front of a magazine, or because we have a Top 10 song, or we posed for posters in a magazine, or something like that.

What can people expect from your live show?

Expect the unexpected. A lot of people actually don't know who we are. The album cover doesn't really tell you, the music doesn't really tell you, the single proper doesn't tell you. They should expect the unexpected. We're not rock, we're not indie, we're not pop, we're not dance. They should expect to be surprised, really . Keep an open mind. If they bought the album and they get it, then they're going to like the live show. If they bought the album and they sort of thought, "I can't hear that bit properly, it doesn't sound really clear," they don't get the album because it's supposed to be like that. It's all anti-production. It's about making good music that's not slick, not really high polished, finished in a really expensive studio.

"Thunder, Lightning, Strike" is definitely eclectic.

We hope so. When bands come out they get compared to the last band that came out. Nobody has compared us to another band. Not only do we look different, we sound different. We really are a different group of kids. We're completely unexpected, and hopefully they'll appreciate it for what it is. The media wants to turn so quickly on band when they like the album. I give it three to six months and they turn on the band. They say, "Oh, they're old. Here's the new Go! Team." We don't think there's any reason for them to do that. We're still keeping it real. We're still being true to ourselves.