Deadmau5, born Joel Zimmerman, is a Canadian EDM luminary who played a pivotal role in the genre's resurgence during the 2000s. Zimmerman's musical journey began with piano lessons in his childhood, fueled by a passion for video games and computers. As a teenager, he experimented with music using old computer chips, co-producing a dance music program at a Niagara Falls radio station. His early ventures led him to compose for a stock music company. In 2002, Zimmerman's peculiar encounter with a dead mouse in his computer earned him the nickname "dead mouse guy." Embracing the moniker, he adopted the shortened form, Deadmau5, as his chat room username. Under this alias, he released his debut album, "Get Scraped," in 2005 through ZOOLOOK records. The glitchy and 8-bit-inspired sound of his second album, "Vexillology" (2006),