These are exciting times for fans of Girls Aloud: The British-Irish girl group, on hiatus since 2009, has debuted a Twitter handle and relaunched GirlsAloud.com with an announcement that they’ll be releasing a new album on November 26 to celebrate their tenth anniversary! Girls Aloud Ten will include all the group’s greatest hits plus four new songs. Even better? A Girls Aloud UK tour in 2013! (No US date? Come on guys!)

Before there was The X-Factor to pump out hit machines like One Direction, there was 2002′s Popstars: The Rivals. The talent show sought to put together a girl group and a boy group to compete for a spot at the top of the charts. The five lucky ladies? Nadine Coyle, Nicola Roberts, Kimberley Walsh, Sarah Harding, and Cheryl Tweedy (now best known as Cheryl Cole), who would band together to form Girls Aloud. Their first single dominated the UK Christmas charts, and the rest is history: Twenty consecutive top ten singles, five platinum albums, and one Brit Award for Best Single of 2009. (And that boy band? Long since forgotten.) They’re the UK’s biggest girl group, beating out our beloved Spice Girls, though they’ve never cracked the US market.

So for those Fashionista readers who are already Girls Aloud fans, consider this a fun trip down memory lane. For the rest of you who may not be familiar, here’s your primer to the UK’s biggest girl group.

Photos: Getty