They've got a smash single. And they even have a cool name. But what and who are Chumbawamba?

That's the question many American music fans have been asking over the past few weeks, usually right after another radio station plays "Tubthumping," Chumbawamba's chart-topping anthem.

"I get knocked down, but I get up again," the infectious track goes. "You're never gonna keep me down."

Yep. That would be Chumbawamba.

Actually, Chumbawamba have been around since 1986, when the band released their debut record on their own Agit-Pop imprint out of Leeds, UK. They called the record Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records, and according to Chumbawamba vocalist / guitarist Boff, it was most certainly a shot at Bob Geldof's Live Aid effort.

"About three weeks before we went to record our debut," Boff said, "the Live Aid Record came out. So we scrapped everything -- we had to rewrite the entire thing and try to react against it. Live Aid never took the issue of starving children away from pop culture. We'd have said something about why people were starving -- not just 'hey, send some money.'"

If you think that's brash, consider some of Chumbawamba's other moments in hooligan history. The band has contributed music to a picture book by English photographer Casey Orr called Portraits Of Anarchists, while the cover to their 1991 album, entitled Anarchy, was banned by some British record outlets after its artwork (a photo of a woman givingbirth) was deemed pornographic. Boff claims that any figure of authority is basically a "hate figure" for the band -- "whether that be a politician, the prime minister or a monarchy state... because there's a better way of doing things than by telling other people what to do." And a few months back, Chumba dancer Danbert Nobacon interrupted a set by the Smashing Pumpkins on live German television.

"They had this whole different mind set for performing at this festival," Boff recalls. " "Danbert stripped completely naked and wrote 'PUNK' on his chest. And then, he went right across the stage and just stood at the front while they were playing. The dancers and security went absolutely mad, and we got ejected from the site."

"We really thought about the fact that it was on TV, and people would see this 'punk' thing," says Boff. "We really tried to think about it, rather than just go in the audience and throw a bottle or shout them and say 'rockstars!' When we're going to piss people off, we're going to be clever about it. So people will talk about it."

People have been talking about "Tubthumping" since it started pumping through modern rock radio airwaves in late August. Since then, the single has broken barriers across the dial, gaining spins at dance, rock and Top 40 stations across the United States. For Chumbawamba, who released their first six records in relative obscurity, the fact that a capitalist major label has spread the Chumba word is quite frightening.

"It definitely worries me. We shied away from (major labels) for a lapse of 12 years. If nothing had happened, and we released 'Tubthumping' on our own and no one heard it, we could have gone away, cynical as always, and say 'oh, it has nothing to do with marketing at all.'"

"Unfortunately now," Boff laments, "we've almost been proven wrong. Capitalism works. Obviously we knew, but we thought we could do it a different way."

The band -- which got its name from endless toying with the primal children's computer game Speak and Spell -- is planning to do it the American way, by launching a stateside tour later this year. In the meantime, "Tubthumping" - a British term for soap boxing - continues to burn up the charts.

Boff and Chumbawamba are taking it all in stride.

"To have this song that fits some sort of context and is on the radio everywhere is bizarre," Boff concedes. "Unfortunately, I have to put it down to the fact that somebody's marketed it well. If we would have made it a year ago on our own label, I don't think anyone would've heard it."

JON VENA