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In an era of downloading and disposability, Kristin Hersh is bringing tangibility and aesthetics back to recorded music with her Crookedproject, a book of essays and lyrics that contains a password that lets you download 10 new songs. She has learned to live with the bipolar disorder that makes her music both a pleasure and a danger, and she’s waist-deep in a new Throwing Muses record. Happy days, she tells SINÉAD GLEESON

‘I LOVE Lisa Fletcher’s flower photographs. They’re flawed, and it’s a pretty good way to back up what I’m saying about music.” Kristin Hersh is enduring a Rhode Island heatwave and talking about Crooked, her new project. When Radiohead released In Rainbowsin 2007, critical reaction to the content was subsumed by talk of how the record was actually distributed. The pay-what-you-like transaction was feted as pioneering, but in the same year Hersh adopted a similar model with her Cash project, which is how Crookedis being released. A fair-trade approach to music, fans pay a subscription and Hersh uploads a song for download every month.