Susheela Raman was born in London in 1973. Her parents from Thanjavur in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu had arrived in London in the mid-sixties and when Susheela was four they left the UK for Australia.

Susheela grew up singing South Indian classical music and began giving recitals at an early age. As a teenager in Sydney she got into Black American music started her own band and began singing funk, rock and jazz, which demanded quite different voice techniques. She tried to bring these streams together when in 1995 she travelled to India to rediscover her roots by way of further exploring carnatic music.

Returning to England in 1997, she started to work with guitarist/producer Sam Mills who had made a record called 'Real Sugar' with a Bengali singer named Paban Das Baul. This record inspered her because it bridged a gap and found common ground for one particular kind of Indian music to be expressed to a new audience. It was a huge hit in Bengal itself. Sam's work with the West African musicians in the group Tama also opened a whole set of contact points with the Parisian music scene. Susheela has definitely maintained a very strong 'French Connection'.

After a period of three years experimenting Susheela and Sam made their first album together, Salt Rain. Released in 2001 on Narada, an American subsidiary of EMI, it went gold in France and in the UK was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize. She also won the Best Newcomer award from BBC Radio 3.

In 2003 she released her second album Love Trap which featured amongst other collaborators the legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen and Tuvan singer Albert Kuvezin of the group Yat-Kha. The title track is a re-interpretation of an Ethiopian song from the seventies by the singer Mahmoud Ahmed.

In 2005, came a third album for Narada, Music for Crocodiles. This was partly recorded in Chennai (Madras) in India. This included "The Same Song" which was used by Mira Nair for the end credits of her film "The Namesake". (Nair also used to great effect Susheela's version of the 60's Hindi film song "Ye Mera Divanapan Hai' from the previous album). She sings for the first time in French with the song "L'Ame Volatile". Apart from Classical titles such as "Sharavana" her training in Indian classical music makes its presence felt with her singing "Meanwhile" (on the same album) in a raga called Kanakaangi, and in the song "Light Years" features a melody in Kalyani as well as the exquisite venne playing of Punya 'Devi' Srinivas.

In 2006 Susheela was again nominated for BBC World Music Award and was the subject of a one hour documentary by French-German TV Channel ARTE, called 'Indian Journey' directed by Mark Kidel.

Susheela's deal with Narada ended in 2006 and that year she independently recorded an album 33 1/3 which is a set of re-imaginings of some album tracks from the sixties and seventies. Artists covered include Bob Dylan, John Lennon, The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, Jimi Hendrix, Can and Throbbing Gristle. The album features long term collaborators Sam Mills on guitar, Vincent Segal on cello, and tabla player and percussionist Aref Durvesh.

The album was released in April 2007 in France on the independent label XIII Bis.

Susheela continues to research and discover music from South India, studying in 2007 with the Bhakti singer Kovai Kamla.