There is a sense of déjà vu when Zooming with Róisín Murphy from her living room. That would be because so many of us have watched the former Moloko frontwoman dancing, singing, dressing up and generally showing out from her home during lockdown, with her spontaneous spirit-lifting performances ultimately leading to a full livestream concert on Mixcloud which she conceived, directed and delivered to mark the release of her latest album Róisín Machine.

‘It was just a natural “I’ve got dresses, I will wear them” type thing,’ she says. ‘I think I dressed up more in the lockdowns than I did normally. I was in a really good mood putting out Róisín Machine. We’d worked on and off for ten years on this record so it was joyful to put it out, even in the midst of all the madness.’

Making the album took her back to her old Steel City stomping ground, spiritually and literally. Murphy was born in Wicklow in Ireland, raised in Manchester and now lives between London and Ibiza, but she first found her tribe when she moved to Sheffield at the age of 19, forming Moloko with her then-partner Mark Brydon in the mid-90s. Her current collaborator, the DJ/producer Richard Barratt, aka Parrot, works out of his Sheffield studio and coaxed Murphy northwards to record some stellar vocals.

‘People say it’s a disco record but I would say it’s a Sheffield record more than it is anything else,’ says Murphy. ‘Down deep at the core of it is this clang of steel. I was reading about the Human League and Heaven 17 people watching David Bowie on Top of the Pops and then getting dressed up in their sister’s blouse, putting on make-up and trying to get to the only weirdo pub in the town. There’s a direct line that goes right back to glam rock.’

Style is all part of the equation for Murphy, who has been dubbed art pop royalty for her playful, sculptural outfits and fierce vision, as showcased on the sleeve of Róisín Machine. ‘She’s a bit of a punk as well as a disco dolly,’ says Murphy of her album cover alter ego. ‘I wanted a little bit of aggression, but the photographer is a very classy guy who often shoots for Vogue, and I don’t think he expected the ruggedness I brought on the day. I could see the fear in his eyes; he was afraid of what he was photographing, which I think is the right way to go about it.’

That ability to invest in character has not gone unnoticed. Later this year, Murphy will make her screen acting debut playing a witch in the Netflix adaptation of Sally Green’s young adult novel Half Bad. ‘The director was a fan and just thought I’d be good at playing a witch, ha ha,’ she deadpans. ‘It wasn’t that much work, a few days shooting, a little bit of dubbing into other people’s mouths, like I was possessing them. It was fun, it was interesting and the outfits are fabulous.’

Murphy has aspirations to do more directing of her own, with an Irish family saga based on her own parents as her dream project. But, for now, this singer, style icon, lockdown tonic and self-confessed 'wonky dancer' is back out on the road, pitching up in the ‘best town in the fucking land’ for the Riverside Festival in Glasgow, where she headlines alongside the diverse danceable likes of Carl Cox, Derrick Carter, Celeste and recent List cover star Bemz.

‘We did miss dancing together, didn’t we?’ she reflects. ‘I do often romanticise my parents’ era where people used to sing songs together all the time, but they didn’t do as much dancing as we do. My generation went right back to the beginning and became tribal about dance and it became something you did three, four, five times a week with other people in mass environments, communicating on this other level. It is a 3D sculpture of music. I’m not a great dancer but what I do know is music, so I can feel when changes are going to come so then I can make a ham-fisted attempt at being symmetrical. Dancing helps you understand music and understanding music helps you dance.’

Róisín Murphy plays Riverside Festival, Glasgow, Saturday 4 June.