THEY’RE a three-piece from Deptford, whose debut album was recorded in their bedrooms, so how exactly did The Shortwave Set end up working with super-producer Danger Mouse in sunny California?

It was as much of a shock for the trio — singers and guitarists Andrew Pettitt and Ulrika Bjornse and David Farrell, who is in charge of samples and decks — who are genuine Anglophiles.

I suggest to Pettitt that there are few people who look quite as English as himself and Farrell, who work a combination of old fashioned tailoring and charity shop finds that would make Vivienne Westwood proud.

“What, is it our teeth?” he quips.

“There are probably few people who are as English as me. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

“I would take tins of beans away with me if I could and stuff like that."

Nevertheless, their debut album, 2005’s The Debt Collection, impressed Gnarls Barkley mastermind Danger Mouse enough for him to name it as his album of the year in music weekly the NME.

“Then when Gnarls Barkley had their massive hit with Crazy they were coming over and said well why don’t you play support?,” says Pettitt. “We were like ‘Wow...’, playing these massive shows in front of five or six thousand people.

“And then Danger Mouse said well why don’t you come to LA and we’ll help you out with your next album — what else were we going to say but yes?”

Decamping to Hollywood to record what would become Replica Sun Machine was, unsurprisingly, an odd experience for the threesome.

“It was amazing — our first record we made in our bedrooms so it was a bit of a culture shock to go to Los Angeles for seven weeks and make a record,” says Pettitt.

“Everything about it was just so bizarre — the weather, the shopping malls, the people, the studios — it was just a crazy experience and obviously one that you’ll always remember.

“We didn’t see Brangelina but we did see Mike Tyson in a bar looking really scary on his own and we were hanging out with The Strokes, that was quite cool.

“We went to a pool party — we turned up in our regular palaver with white hankies on our heads and everyone was quite toned and tanned and plastic looking as you would expect.

“We stuck out like a sore thumb but it was a good people-watching experience, that’s for sure.”

Now the band are returning to the North-west to play at Manchester’s Dry Bar. Having recently headlined the Night and Day’s JD Set, which was filmed by Channel 4, and recorded sessions for Xfm and 6Music, the region is becoming a regular haunt.

• The Shortwave Set play Manchester’s Dry Bar on November 27.

Read the second part of our exclusive interview with The Shortwave Set here.