Pass vector of column names to paste() within mutate (dplyr)

I'm trying to write a function that takes as one of its arguments a vector of column names from user. The column names will be used to specify what columns of the dataframe will be pasted together to form a new column within dplyr::mutate. I tried to collapse the elements of argument vector first and then use the collapsed string in mutate - this is wrong. See that latest attempt below. I made other attempts but I'm not understanding the new quo, enquo, UQ, !!!, !!, and so on within dplyr. Can someone show what I need to do?

df <- data.frame(.yr = c("2000", "2001", "2002"), .mo = c("12", "01", "02"), .other = rnorm(3))
cols <- colnames(df)[1:2]

do_want <- df %>%
  mutate(new = paste(.yr, .mo, sep = "-"))

my_func <- function(dat, vars){
  .vars <- paste(vars, collapse = ",")

  result <- dat %>%
    mutate(new = paste(.vars, sep = "-" ))
  return(result)
}

my_func(dat = df, vars = cols)

edit: this is my attempt at using quo and !! in the function definition. the result is a column of repeated string ".yr,.mo"

my_func <- function(dat, vars){
  .vars <- quo(paste(vars, collapse = ","))

  result <- dat %>%
    mutate(new = paste(!!.vars, sep = "-" ))
  return(result)
}