Who Is VAVO? Meet The Creators Behind YEEDM

Billboard charting Dance/Pop duo VAVO first met back in 2015 while they were both pursuing individual projects in the dance music scene. Over the years, they have continued to evolve their sound to reach new audiences. Their latest creation is a cross between country music and EDM, which they call, YEEDM.

At the start of their journey together as a duo, Jesse Fischer was living in Vancouver and Alden Martin was living in London. For years, they bonded over their passion for the music industry through Facebook messages and “the rest was history,” Martin told Country Now. 

Who Is VAVO?

“For me personally, I grew up playing the piano. Well, I tried to learn how to play the piano, actually. Never got that anywhere…And then, yeah, I started producing when I was 12, or 13, like messing around, but I’ve always been into like dance music. So it’s just always been my sort of passion,” Martin said as he explained how he got his start mixing music. 

Fischer then chimed in to share how he got to this point in his career. “For me, I came more from the DJ side where Alden was more production side. Dance music wasn’t as big early on in my life as it was for Alden because over in the UK, dance music has been a staple for decades. Whereas in North America, really, we only saw the rise of dance music mainstream in like the early 2010, 2011 era. So I was a little later to it, but just the same thing. Just had a big passion for dance music and entertaining people.”

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What is YEEDM?

They reached their breakout year in 2019, when they began to tour together and eventually earned two No. 1’s on dance radio. Within the past few months, they have gained a new momentum in the country music scene sharing remix’s of stars like Morgan Wallen, Mitchell Tenpenny, Dustin Lynch and more on social media. This lead to the start of YEEDM. 

“It was funny cause when we posted our Morgan Wallen remix on TikTok, there was somebody in the comments that said, “It’s YEEDM season.” And we said, “Hey, can we use that?” And she was like, “I’m all for it.” And that was kind of the birth of that and it just kind of made sense cause it’s like Yeehaw dance music,” Fischer explained.

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While Fischer has been a country fan for some time now, it took a bit longer for Martin to join his appreciation for the genre. Luckily, through their recent work, Martin said he has “grown to love it.”

“I’ve always been a big country fan and we’ve talked about it even before this,” Fischer said. “Years ago, we had talked about making something work with a country singer because if you think back to kind of Avicii when he brought out ‘Wake Me Up’ at Ultra, it was kind of an eye-opener for people. And ever since then, there’s been a few songs here and there that other artists have done, but I feel like now we’re just in the golden era of the country/pop/dance music scene. So yeah, we’re very excited to be where we are today.”

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Teamed Up With Priscilla Block

On April 28, VAVO teamed up with Priscilla Block to release their first YEEDM EP. The project, titled Spring Break ’23 Remixes, features four of the viral country star’s recent releases – “Just About Over You,” “My Bar,” “Couple Spring Breaks Back,” and “Off The Deep End.”

These songs have been mixed with EDM to form the ultimate set of jams for any warm-weather occasion.

“Priscilla hit us up after, I think, seeing one of our remixes that we had done. We absolutely love Priscilla and her team, they’re amazing,” Fischer gushed. “We spent a couple days with her down in Myrtle Beach getting ready for this, and she just said, ‘Hey, I have a couple songs that I kind of wanna roll out for like a spring break, summer vibe.’ Because they are very different. Like she’s got her diehard fans, which is awesome to see, and then when you put out something like this project that we did, you just garner that many more fans and you open your audience to a much wider range.”

Martin went on to explain what goes into their process of choosing this set of songs out of Block’s entire music catalog. “We had a bunch of songs we could just listen through and see what ones fit best. It’s more just going with the vibe, seeing if like the vocal, the instruments kind of fit with the dance vibe and we tried a couple others, but these are ones.”

“I think it’s important to note too, ’cause we have had a lot of artists hit us up for remixes and stuff. There’re just certain songs that can’t be remixed,” Fischer added. “So you know, whether the BPM’s just off or the way that the top line is sung, it’s a little too stretched out. So when she sent us, like Alden said, she sent us a bunch of those and we kind of said, ‘Hey, these are the ones that we feel we could do best.’ We don’t wanna put out a product that we don’t stand behind either just to put it out. Like, we have to really be passionate behind it. And the four that we did choose, all three of us, Priscilla, Alden and I, we really, really love.”

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The duo had found that the best part of their new creative venture is bringing two opposite fanbases together under one song. 

Fischer continued, “The cool thing about it is, it’s not just country fans or it’s not just dance fans. We have people that hit us up that are like, “Hey, I’ve never liked country music. I’ve been a diehard dance fan, and you’ve introduced it.” And we have the flip side saying, “I’ve been a huge country fan, huge Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs fan. Never been into dance music, but now this is all I’m gonna play all summer on my boat” or camping or at festivals that they go to. So we’re seeing such like a unified front of fans that are just coming and meeting in the middle, which is cool cause I honestly thought that we’d have maybe one-sided fans, but we’re not seeing that, which is incredible.

They Hope To Work With Other Country Artists

With country music continuing to see a shift in the genre and going outside the bounds, the duo is hopeful to work with other country artists such as Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Dustin Lynch, Kelsea Ballerini and more, to continue growing YEEDM.

“I feel like a lot of these artists too, there’s a lot of country/pop nowadays, right? Like country music isn’t necessarily what it used to be,” Fischer shared. “There’s still some of that older style music, but…it’s become a lot more mainstream. So I feel like for us now, it’s like the perfect time to strike because a lot of these artists are more open to a cross-genre collaboration. When we think of stuff that Tyler did with Florida Georgia Line with Bebe Rexha or Zedd and Maren Morris, like those are some of the biggest songs in the world and they were a cross-country collaboration. So yeah, I think Alden and I are very excited for the future, and we got some big stuff coming.”

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He added, “Alden and I have always had a strong interest in doing more than just dance music, whether it be, you know, hip hop collaborations, pure pop collaborations. We’ve always wanted to push those boundaries. This is kind of, you know, opening the doors for that and, I think that there’s a lot of, uh, stuff coming in the future.”

The duo teased that a summer tour could be in the works for 2023. They currently have several dates on the books, starting with May 5 and May 12, when they will take the stage in Ontario, Canada. Then on MAY 27, they will head to San Diego, CA for the Sing Dance Crawl San Diego.