Latin-pop breakthrough act RBD [ tickets ] will return to the United States next summer to push its forthcoming English-language debut, "Rebels."

The group--Dulce Maria, Anahi, Maite, Christopher, Alfonso and Christian--plans to visit Spain, Italy, France and Japan before heading to US stages. All the group members go by only their first names .

"We're going to do some US concerts with the new tour including the English songs with some Spanish songs," Alfonso said during a recent interview.

RBD releases "Rebels" Dec. 19 on Virgin Records. Meanwhile, the first video from the group's current Spanish-language album, "Tu Amor," is receiving airplay on MTV networks including MTV Hits.

The group is looking to build on its already notable impact on US audiences. During RBD's spring 2006 US tour, the group sold out gigs at venues including the Los Angeles Coliseum, Miami's American Airlines Arena and New York's Madison Square Garden.

Alfonso said their success in the United States has been a "huge surprise."

"Everything that's happening with RBD since the beginning has been a surprise," he said. "I am very, very happy with what's happening in the US. The only thing we have to do is work really hard, especially because of the opportunity that we have so far.

"There's a lot of traveling in this business. Something I enjoy a lot is traveling, meeting new people, new cultures--and I think that's great."

RBD features the six lead actors of the Mexican telenovela (a Mexican soap opera) "Rebelde," which debuted on Televisa in October 2004. They have released three Spanish-language albums, each of which were also translated into Portuguese. Following the release of an album in January 2005, the show's musical element became so popular that artists ranging from Lenny Kravitz to Hilary Duff appeared on "Rebelde" to promote their music, RBD's publicist said.

"Since the beginning, the producer, Pedro Damián, told us about this project, and he told us it was going to be both acting and singing," Alfonso said. "So he searched for people who could act and could sing. Suddenly, this whole thing grew in a gigantic way and here we are."

"Rebelde" wrapped in summer 2005 as Mexico's longest-running telenovela with 440 episodes, which continue to run in the United States, Asia, Indonesia and a dozen other countries.

Now, RBD will turn its focus to "Rebels" and a new sitcom, "RBD: La Familia."

"We've done one episode," Alfonso said. "If it does well, it's going to be maybe 24 episodes [for the first season], and we're going to figure out how it goes. It's between reality and fiction. We are not using any characters that do not exist. The characters are from the band. The sitcom is about the real six characters from RBD. The things that are happening inside the story are completely fiction. The story is about what would happen behind the scenes in RBD. All the situations happening there are just fiction."

All this work, including the recording of "Rebels," has brought the group closer together, Alfonso said.

"We spent 10 days completely working inside the studio [for the album]. We already had the songs, and we worked all those 10 days like crazy. We started each day at 7 in the morning and we finished at maybe midnight, all six of us working really hard. We can say it was a wonderful experience. It united us more as a group because we were working really hard with the soap opera, with the tour, with the different promos that we were doing."