there has been much recent progress in the study of ricci solitons on nilpotent and solvable lie groups. in this talk, i will define the ricci yang-mills flow which is related to the ricci flow. i will also define ricci yang-mills solitons, which are generalized fixed points of the ricci yang-mills flow. these metrics are related to ricci solitons; however, they are defined on principal g-bundles and are designed to detect more of the bundle structure. on nilpotent lie groups, one can say precisely in what sense ricci yang-mills solitons are related to ricci solitons. i will provide examples of 2-step nilpotent lie groups that admit ricci yang-mills solitons but that do not admit ricci solitons. this is joint work with mike jablonski.