so when I listen to a lot of modern dance music I always hear cool vocal chops played around with. Particularly in prog. house and trance, the samples are unique enough to not sound like they come from a vengeance pack, but at the same time I doubt the artist hired a vocalist to do a few custom oohhs and aahs into the microphone.

So where do they typically get these? do they really record them themself? or sample old obscure pieces of music?, or maybe they're just buried within a single google search away from me?

They all use my sample pack ...
http://www.thecontrolcentre.com/marnietron.htm

but that would mean they all use ableton, which I know isnt the case.

here are the kind of examples I'm talking about
[url]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUCbkRvsDoo&ob=av2e[/url]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqtpYHHEW8

I was kidding ... but FYI the samples are all included as WAV files, so anyone can use them. If you have Live and Sampler they're already mapped out for you.