Camille: The fast facts

Who springs to mind when you think of French pop music? Serge Gainsbourg? Edith Piaf? Maybe Vanessa Paradis? Well, now there's a new Gallic star de pop gunning for your attention, Parisian singer/songwriter Camille, the winner of the European prize at last year's BBC3 World Music Awards. Keen to find out more about this Camille chick, we asked our charming French intern, Monsieur Raphael Clairefond, to give her a call. Here's what he managed to glean:

She doesn't like describing her own music.
In fact, she thinks being asked to do so is "horrific". However, when prompted, Camille will concede that her music "mainly focuses on the voice, and all its shapes and sounds. For me, anything that creates a sound creates music. This is what I am working on, and what amuses me".

Her influences are what you'd call "eclectic".
Very. Her new album, Music Hole, is inspired by "Music Hall from the fifties - singers like Elvis or Judy Garland", but "also the idea of repetition, like in African drums music or in minimalist music like [innovative US composer] Steve Reich".

The 'hole' in the title isn't meant to be smutty. Well, not entirely...
"The hole can be an opening, a mouth [or] any other body holes which have a mysterious and organic dimension," she explains. "It's also a reference to the fact that music comes from our holes and I wonder about the origins of music. Besides, there are often meetings between people playing music around a hole, a fire, a well."

Jamie Cullum appears on her album.
Actually, everyone's favourite jazz hobbit "did some percussion on the piano" for Music Hole, an experience Camille found "quite rich".

She doesn't think singing is a rarefied pursuit.
"Anyone can sing. It doesn't matter whether one is a pastry cook or a literary student," she reckons. "Singing, for me, is a personal way to express myself and I would be able to do another job and keep singing and writing songs. It's not incompatible."

She hasn't started singing in English just to become more successful.
"I think English people like the exoticism of the French language, so it's not that simple," she insists. "With regard to commercial consequences, I just don't know. Singing in a foreign language allows other people to understand what I say, but on the other hand French people [will] understand less easily."

Music Hole is released on April 7.