Dino Jelusick (Dino Jelusić), born 4 June 1992, is a Croatian rock singer, musician, and songwriter. He was the founder, principal songwriter and lead singer of hard rock band Animal Drive, which was formed in 2012 and dissolved in 2020. Besides working on several hard rock and metal projects, Dino became a permanent member of American rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra since 2016. He also worked with Gus G., Mike Mangini, George Lynch, Will Hunt, Jeff Scott Soto, Joel Hoekstra, Steve Smyth, Jon Oliva, Kip Winger, John Macaluso, Deen Castronovo, Phil Demmel, Mike Portnoy, Henrik Linder, Justin Johnson, Tony Franklin, Kyle Hughes, Virgil Donati, Kiko Loureiro, Jordan Rudess, David Coverdale, Tommy Aldridge, Reb Beach, Michele Luppi and others.
Dino got his master’s degree in the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, in 2020.
On July 27th 2021, David Coverdale and Whitesnake announced that Dino became new snake and member of Whitesnake! After a part of the Whitesnake farewell tour was canceled, August 2022, Dino jumped in to sing for The Dead Daisies, replacing legendary Glenn Hughes.
So far Dino recorded numerous songs and albums with some legendary musicians: World of War 2 (Michael Romeo), Dirty Shirley with George Lynch, Magnus Carlsson’s “Free Fall”, Ralph, Stoneleaders…
As his parents also played musical instruments, Dino was introduced to music and singing at the age of three and started performing at the age of five by appearing on television and on international festivals.
Dino participated and won the first Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in Denmark with his own song “Ti si moja prva ljubav“. He released his debut solo album, No. 1 in 2003 and an English version in 2004. He toured the United States, Scandinavia and Australia until 2005 and the tour included four concerts in Denmark with a total audience of 100.000 people. The same year Dino became the youngest nominee of the Croatian music award Porin at the age of twelve. In 2005, he was one of the three main acts at the Langeland festival in Denmark along with UB40 and Ronan Keating. In Croatia he released a conceptual album “Prošao sam sve” inspired by Marijan Gubina’s book “260 days”.
