How to graffitti a folk singer

Lisa Hannigan has got a ukelele and she's not afraid to use it... The 30-year-old, from Kilcooln in County Meath may be familiar to you from her six-year collaboration with Damien Rice, which produced classics like Cannonball and The Blower's Daughter but also this sultry, under-the-sheets version of Pink's Get The Party Started.

Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan - Get The Party Started


Hannigan quit Rice's band in 2007, saying she had "become pretty outspoken about my frustrations at the direction the band was going in... I'm sure he was starting to find me a pain". If her solo material is anything to go by, her bugbear was having to be so bloody morose all the time. Freed from the shackles of Rice's incessant girly weeping, Hannigan's debut album See Sew was giddy, playful and open-hearted. Her new album, Passenger, promises more of the same - quaintly hand-stitched folk music with a sunny disposition. If you can imagine Laura Marling on poppers doing a comedy "top of de mornin to yer" Oirish accent, you'll be half way there.

In the video for the first single, Knots, Hannigan looks like the Rose Of Tralee, dusky of hair and rosy of cheek in a virginal white dress. She then spends four minutes trying to lip-sync while people throw paint over her. It's brilliant.

Lisa Hannigan - Knots


Passenger is out now in the US and Canada, but fans in the UK & Ireland have to wait til October. Which is rubbish.

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