Max and John insist they are ing. Although other bands have claimed the moniker, the Los Angeles-based neo-folk-pop duo refuses to give it up. Indeed, in the two years since the band began, the breadth of their productivity and consistent positivity seem to warrant the all-encompassing suffix.

In their nearly one hundred performances to-date, they have managed to always put on a show almost entirely different from the previous, including the staging of a modern kabuki play, building a fort and playing in it for six hours, filling a room with dried leaves, lots of semi-nudity and Laurel-and-Hardy theatrics, a monthly series at Los Angeles' Machine Project in which they told an original creation myth of each color of the rainbow (culminating in a rainbow-building workshop where the audience built and decorated a giant rainbow), playing while suspended in mid-air, and Max singing along with a mix tape only he could hear while John accompanied on rhodes, making people cry on multiple occasions and always promoting an undeniable sense of joy through humor and simplicity. Whitehot Magazine said of one performance: "You can't help but smile at a song that touches deep at the root of your humanity." A production of Herman Melville's Moby Dick is currently in the works.

The first four albums (aptly titled ing one through ing four) were recorded before the band was six months old, splicing together simple repetitions of bells, keyboards, voices and household objects. ing 5 proved a large step for the duo. Songs were bred from meticulous sampling and overdubs. The last song on the album (also heard alongside tracks from Ariel Pink [a former band-mate] and R. Stevie Moore on Ballbearings Pinatas' u.s. to i compilation) seemed to hint at the vocal-based songs that were to follow on ing's sixth album.

The band's unique style of story-telling comes to maturity on the new ing 6, with an awkward message of love that is stronger than ever. ing's seventh album You Can See It Here, Flashing is a collection of Shel Silverstein poems set to original music, available exclusively on their website: ingismaxandjohn.com.