Songfacts®:

• One of the earliest and most popular songs from the Welsh band The Joy Formidable, "Whirring" evokes confusion and disconnect. The title is never mentioned in the lyric.
• This was written by The Joy Formidable songwriting team of lead singer Rhiannon Bryan and bass player Rhydian Davies, who at the time were living together in London. According to Bryan, the song was born out of frustration. "Something was happening in my life where I really felt misunderstood," she said in a Songfacts interview. "I felt like no one was really listening to me or understood how I felt. I felt quite lost."
• "Whirring" first appeared on the 2008 EP A Balloon Called Moaning and was released as a single in 2009. In 2011, a new version was included on the band's debut album, The Big Roar.
• Regarding the refrain, "You make me sleep so badly, invisible friend," Bryan says she had a lot of sleepless nights when she was writing the song, and felt like she wasn't connected.
• When the song was first released as a single in 2009, it was accompanied by a video directed by Dain Bedford that shows the band lugging their equipment up a hill and then performing the song in the windy landscape before trashing their gear and hiking back down.
  
  A new video for the song directed by Christopher Mills was released in 2011 when the song was included on The Big Roar album. This one is animated in parts and heavily composited, with avatars of the band members travelling through a digital landscape.
• The comedy-rap collective The Lonely Island sampled this on their 2013 track "YOLO," which features Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamar. Bryan was "happy and excited and kind of bewildered" when she heard it. Joy Formidable drummer Matt Thomas was especially pleased, as he's a big fan of The Lonely Island. "YOLO" first appeared on Saturday Night Live - Lonely Island member Andy Samberg was a cast member at the time.