Hours before I speak to 23-year-old folk musician Clara Mann, she becomes fixated on a viral news story. A deep sea anglerfish, a species that lives 2,000 metres in the ocean’s abyss, was sighted in daylight for the first time. Supposedly, the creature was travelling towards the light in a last-ditch attempt at survival. “With no concept of daylight or knowledge of what was up there, the fish kept swimming,” says Mann, almost welling up. “I realised, oh my God, I am the anglerfish… but I survived!”

Mann has an affinity with the fish because, before recording her new debut album Rift, she was also searching for light in a dark period. Relationships in her life, both romantic and platonic ones, had disintegrated. “I was in a space where everything in my life was gone and burned down and unfamiliar,” she tells me from across a table in a rustic Shoreditch pub. “I felt really alone and lost, and I remember not really being able to feel anything. I didn’t have anything except what’s inside of me, which is this desire to make things – I wanted to write stuff, I wanted to draw, I wanted to create.”

The result is a whispering, cautious record, in which Mann pokes at her wounds while observing the world from her south London bedroom window. The production is stripped back and grounded in folky naturalism, consisting of delicate piano notes and terrycloth-soft strums. And then there’s Mann’s warbling crystalline vocals, which sound not dissimilar to the croons of English singer-songwriters Billie Marten or Laura Marling. Listening to her music feels safe and comforting; like being hugged by layers of cotton wool.

“Doubled Over”, an almost acoustic ballad that reflects on vignettes of a souring relationship, was a song that Mann had to write to move forward. That purge led to “Stadiums”, in which Mann studies a long-term relationship she had with another musician, where their mutual love for their craft eventually drove them apart. She whispers about her lover striving for “glory and stadiums” with “me on the back foot”. “It was about being with someone who was obsessed with music,” she says. “My passion was also that… and them. It eventually felt like living with three people in a relationship. It’s hard when music is your great love, when it’s the thing that gives your life meaning, but you also want to be like, ‘Live for me!’”

Before I meet Mann, I read up on her and stupidly assume that she would be mysterious or quiet. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Mann is animated, chatty and full of witty anecdotes as she sits before me with a red shawl draped across her head. “People have painted me as this flowery, airy-fairy, vulnerable and pale girl,” she says. “I’m not just some vulnerable girl who runs through fields of flowers. I love to yap. I love to party.”

Mann’s music is a calculated escape, back to her rural childhood environment, and away from the overstimulating modern world. She grew up in southern France with her sister and academic parents, which she describes as “Little House on the Prairie vibes” with “only period dramas” to watch on TV. She later moved to a village near the limestone cliffs of Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, where she spent many hours making “daisy chains in fields” at Quaker school.

Her unplugged family lifestyle, however, raised eyebrows among people they knew. DVDs of Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Charmed would arrive in the post from concerned family members. “I think they thought, ‘These children are living in a small village in the south of France, with two bookish academic parents, and just running through the prairies and meadows,’ and they were like: ‘They need to know what’s out there,’” says Mann. Then the DVDs would arrive in the post, she remembers, and mischievously rubs her palms together.

The lack of screens paid off: Mann passed her grade eight piano exam aged 15 and began teaching the following year. But after all that, classic music didn’t appeal to her. “I hated performing so much,” she says. “I would get insane nerves and my hands would be visibly shaking.” The first time she performed her self-written folk music, she wasn’t anxious at all. “My little sister said to me, ‘Why weren’t your knees shaking?’ after the show. I had been doing the wrong thing for years.”

This realisation spurred her on further. She turned down a place at UCL and threw herself into the London music scene, living in a family friend’s attic. Her parents were supportive, but they had concerns. “I think any parent would worry because music is tough and unstable,” she says. “It’s not somewhere where any sort of mental or physical vulnerability is looked after.” The harsh lifestyle of touring sparked another worry. “I think if you’re not looked after from a young age when you go into music, things can go really wrong.”

Luckily, that hasn’t been the reality for Mann. She says she “couldn’t have dreamed up” her label, state51. “It’s like a place where people believe in imagination and creativity and pastoral care. They care about me as a young person; as someone who makes things and not someone who is just delivering a product.”

The “product” has been delivered on Mann’s own terms – but it’s incredibly well timed. Right now, the folk genre is experiencing constant re-revivals, and Mann attributes that to listeners’ desire for more tranquillity. “In a world that is very loud and everything is supposed to be faster and more efficient, for me, songwriting and folk music are the opposite of that, where you have to stop and take it in,” she says. Audiences at her shows are of different ages – all bound by a desire to connect. “We’re very alienated from one another, and live music, particularly the kind that makes you feel vulnerable and gentle, is a remedy for that.”

She’s not intent on pushing folk music down her generation’s throats, though – or be forced to do any social-media stunts to grab people’s attention. “I just prefer to post pictures on Instagram of rocks and stones,” she laughs. “I find any form of self-promotion really hard.” She has a quiet confidence, but she’s patient about the future. “I’m not someone who thinks, if I’m not a rock star by 26, then I’m going to fail,” she says. “I want to keep doing music in a way that I can build my life around it – whether that means commercial success or not.” After years of hitting piano keys in countryside halls, she’s intent on making this moment matter.

‘Rift’ is out now via state51