Her music effortlessly weaves together folk song form, ambient atmospheres and smoky whispers of electro-acoustic texture to create immersive worlds for each song to sit in. Equipped with a voice that instantly hushes a room to silence, and an almost reverent sensitivity, to be in the world of Hannah’s music is to be engulfed by it; anchored only by a sense of deep trust in an artist who is in complete control of her power. Hannah McKittrick uses music as a portal to reach emotional clarity and existential depth.

Raised by parents who loved music and played it loud on their stereo at all hours of the day, Hannah recalls being confused and unnerved by how certain lines in their Hunters and Collectors records could make her cry without realising.

This early awareness of the way music was able to inject emotion into any space or any person was galvanising to a sensitive child who felt alienated by her big feelings, and so her parents put some money aside each week for violin lessons (which she took for 11 years before coming into singing as a teenager). Hannah moved to Melbourne from her sleepy coastal hometown as an 18-year-old to study Jazz vocals at the VCA, and slowly and shyly began reaching for community.

Hannah’s songwriting took many detours into minimalism, western art music, soul, free improvisation before, perhaps inevitably, returning to her folk roots finding comfort and familiarity in simple chords and poetry. Hannah’s relationship with music now is spiritual, and reverent. The respect she has for the ritual of performance, of people standing silently in a room experiencing songs together, of the distilled awe she has to music is at the forefront of her mind. To see her sing is to feel this commitment to an art that lifts emotion and humanness to the surface, by an artist who is in love with the power of her medium.