As I wrap my head around the mvvm thing, the view is the view, and the viewmodel is 'a modal of a view' and the model are the entities we are dealing with (or at least that is my understanding). But I'm unclear as to what and when the model entities are populated. So for example:

Lets say I have app that needs to create a new record in a DB. And that record should have default values to start with. Who is responsible for the new record, and getting the default values. Does this have anything to do with MVVM or is that part of a data access layer? Who calls the the viewmodel?

Or for existing records when\where are the records retrieved? And saved if altered?

Thanks