Raphaël Haroche was born in Paris in 1975, into a family with roots in Russia, Morocco and Argentina. He writes his own songs on piano and guitar and sings them in a high, breathy voice, and his first album, Hôtel de l'univers, came out in 2000. His second, La Réalité, gave him his first big hit, the duet Sur la route with Jean-Louis Aubert.
His breakthrough was Caravane in 2005. The title song was all over French radio, the album sold well over a million copies, and it won him three Victoires de la Musique the following year. Since then he has kept releasing albums, among them Je sais que la terre est plate and Pacific 231, and he also writes fiction: his short story collection Retourner à la mer won the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 2017.