Like an artist working with cloth, Flora Hibberd weaves layers of meaning into her music. Swirl, the debut album from the Paris-based British songwriter, is a cycle of songs about codes and decoding. Drawing upon her professional experience as a translator of art history texts, Hibberd searches for slippages, where French and English words rub up against each other in uncanny ways. Strange poetry appears in these moments, giving rare glimpses of life’s hidden threads, and illuminating our understanding. Swirl came out on 17 January 2025 on 22Twenty.