She first came to our attention singing bossa-nova versinos of post-punk classics with Nouvelle Vague. Now Camille can count the French President among her growing army of fans. She tells Jim Carroll how it happened.

THE Camille Dalmais fan-club continues to grow. A few weeks ago the singer received a letter in the post from Jacques Chirac. The French president decided it was time he told Camille that he, too, was a big fan of her music. So he wrote a note and bought a stamp.

Monsieur Chirac was in good company, since more than 250,000 of his fellow French citizens have swapped euros for a copy of Camille's new album, Le Fil (The Thread). As a former political science student, however, Camille could probably see another side to Chirac's attempts to woo her with flattery.

"That letter made me laugh a lot," she says. "I just hope he means what he says about liking my music."

By rights, most politicians would steer well clear of Le Fil. It's a daring, adventurous, experimental work, full of songs which come and go within a minute or two without overstaying their welcome. Both scatty and smart, Le Fil has one low hum running the entire length of the album, threading all Camille's folk, cabaret, electronica, classical and avant-garde explorations together. And this wonderful patchwork of styles and sounds has found an audience.

To Camille, her approach makes perfect sense. "What is wrong with having short songs? I think the music industry likes to create formats, especially ones which fit in with what radio stations want. The structure of a song is a very ancient format and it goes back long before there was this idea of having full arrangements for everything. The idea of a chorus, for example, has been around for centuries."

She decided that new songs deserved new templates.

"I'm creating new worlds with my songs, so I feel I have to create my own format for what I have to say. For each idea, there's a format. Some songs will be really powerful and work really well as a 20-second song, some will need six minutes. I've noticed on Le Fil that there's no one song which is very long. I'd say that the long track is the album itself because I look upon it as one continuous song."

Camille's debut album, Le Sac des Filles, was a far more conventional (if also hugely likeable), reflection of a singer beginning to find her feet and expand her voice. She recorded it as a work experience project for her political science course at Sciences Po in Paris.

"You had to get a work placement at the end of the course, but I was recording my album at the time and didn't want to go to some office to work. I decided to try to sell the idea of using my work placement to record the album to the course administrators. I went to see them and told them that I was signed to a big record label and that this would be my work experience. And yes, it worked; they said they thought it was in the right spirit."

Camille's contributions to Nouvelle Vague's bossa-nova reworkings of post-punk hits brought her headlines beyond France. To her, it was just an informal afternoon recording session with musicians she already knew and songs she'd never heard before. "Some singers knew the tracks before they recorded them, but I didn't. I was very little when the songs originally came out and my parents were not into punk or new wave music. It really helped that I didn't know the songs because I made them my own.

"I wasn't into that whole myth thing about classic songs, that they're untouchable. I don't like that kind of attitude, even with my own music."

When it came to recording Le Fil, Camille was determined to do things her way, which meant ditching the coterie of advisors who were around for Le Sac des Filles. "I worked with a lot of people on the first album because I was starting out. I listened to what people had to say, other arrangers and musicians, and I relied on them an awful lot. I feel now I was too dependent on them. For this album, I decided that my instrument was my voice and that I would use that and see how far I could go with it on my own."

She views the transformation in sound between the two albums as proof that she herself has also changed as a person. "I'm happy there is a jump because it means I have evolved. I know I've changed since then and it's good that the music has also changed. I'm far more direct and to the point about things now. There's no messing around. As you grow older, you don't have the same patience as before. You know what you like and what you don't like."

The success of Le Fil does not phase Camille in the least. After all, she reasons, if she likes the music, other people will surely like it too.

"I think people need music which stimulates them. I know I'm trying to make music which stimulates me, that's my challenge. There is a McDonald's kind of music, commercial music which is bland and easy to like, so it's always on the radio and TV and in the media. But I'm not sure if most people will just accept that. I think people expect more from music - they need something more substantial and elaborate."

The biggest challenge was moving Le Fil to the stage. "It was really a recording project, so doing a live show was a big step into the unknown. It's a very introspective album, so I was interested in how people would react to it when they heard it live. It was very different."

Camille need not have worried. People responded with applause and gasps to her live take on the album. Whether it was clambering over tables to steal bottles from the bar or interrogating the audience, Camille's live show is a night out with a difference.

"I like the shows to be wild," she says with a laugh. "Live shows are such an opportunity for, what's the word, mischief. Too many times people go along, fold their arms and go home again. There are lots of good, great things which can happen at a live show. I like to think I can make those things happen."

Le Fil is out now on EMI/Virgin France