PennYo was founded in 2002 by a group of students at the University of Pennsylvania bound together by their passion for singing Chinese songs. The group is the oldest collegiate Chinese a cappella group in the United States. To date, PennYo has released four full-length studio albums: Emergence 無中生友 (2005), Luminar 發光 (2008), Extra Spicy 超辣 (2010) and Generations Y世代 (2016). The group has embarked on three international tours to Shanghai (2007), Taipei (2010) and Singapore (2013), and remains a regular performer at events in Philadelphia and across college campuses across the United States.

The name "PennYo" is a play on the Mandarin word for "friends" 朋友, which aptly sums up the group's close-knit community of members who hail from all corners of the globe. The group shares a mission to bring the sounds of popular Chinese songs to our audiences through the unique American style of collegiate a cappella.