Dear Rouge

Dear Rouge
Drew and Danielle McTaggart of Dear Rouge performing in 2015
Background information
Origin	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Genres	Alternative rock, dance-rock
Years active	2012–present
Labels	Universal Music Canada
Website	www.dearrouge.com
Members	Danielle McTaggart Drew McTaggart

Dear Rouge is a Juno award winning Vancouver-based electronic rock band formed in 2012 by Drew and Danielle McTaggart.

Drew and Danielle McTaggart were both touring musicians under separate projects. They met while in their early touring days, and began dating, before getting married and starting Dear Rouge. The name of the duo is derived from the name of Danielle's home town, Red Deer, Alberta. She had previously been in a duo called Gaetz Ave, named after a street in Red Deer. Gaetz Ave won a GMA Canada Covenant Award in 2005 as New Artist Of The Year. In April 2012, Dear Rouge independently released their debut EP Heads Up! Watch Out!, a four-song EP on their Bandcamp page, and followed up six months later with their second EP Kids Wanna Know.

In November 2012, Dear Rouge won $102,700 as the grand prize winners of the Peak Performance Project put on by the Music BC Industry Organization and CKPK-FM radio station in Vancouver.

In June 2013, Exposure Contest and Dear Rouge partnered up to present a video editing contest in support of their single, "Thinking About You", from their Kids Wanna Know EP The contest drew a wide social media spread, accumulating hundreds of entrants from around the world.

In March 2014, the band's second single "I Heard I Had" charted at #3 in Alternative Rock (Mediabase), #3 in Modern Rock (Mediabase), and at #13 in Canadian Rock (BDS radio). The song also won the 2015 SOCAN Songwriting Prize, an annual competition that honours the best song written and released by 'emerging' songwriters over the past year, as voted by the public. The band released their third single "Best Look Lately" on April 22, 2014. As of September 2014, it has also cracked the Top 20 of the Canadian Alternative Rock and Modern Rock charts.

The band signed to the Canadian branch of Universal Music Group in October 2014, and announced that their debut album Black To Gold will be released through them in early 2015. The band's fourth single, title track "Black To Gold", was sent to radio on January 13, 2015. Black To Gold (Single) was made available digitally on February 10 along with a pre-order for the album. On February 2 the band announced March 30th as the release date for the album and a tour with Arkells. As of May 2015, "Black To Gold" had hit #2 on the Canadian Alt-Rock charts.