Pleasure Pill were raised in San Diego’s underground scene, spending their young adult years skating together, going to DIY punk gigs, and putting on shows in community centers. Lead singer and project founder Jonah Paz, along with his brother Ethan (rhythm guitar) and friends Luke Blake (lead guitar), Ivan Delgado (bass) and Dom Friedly (drums) learned self-sufficiency and dedication early on – ideas that drive the way they operate today. “The DIY ethos teaches you at a very young age that you have to do everything yourself because no one else is going to do it for you,” says Luke. “We’re not waiting on someone else to do stuff for us – we would just rather do it ourselves.” Pleasure Pill are a pop band with stadium-sized ambition; they want to make the best music possible, and be as big as their idols while doing it. But they’re not giving up their values.
Pleasure Pill have been playing music together since they were kids. The band were raised on the classics—Jonah is a Beatles devotee; 90s British bands are a key reference point—and you can hear devotion to melody and pop form throughout their music. Although the band started as Jonah’s solo project, inspired by punk records and bands like the Prodigy, when this iteration of Pleasure Pill started in earnest, in mid-2021, classicism became a guiding principle. “This is just a rock and roll kind of band,” says Jonah. “We don’t want to confuse people – we just want to be as straightforward with it as possible.” Adds Luke: “All that shit that everyone’s into—we’re into it too. We just seem like one of the few bands right now wearing it on our sleeves.”
“Not Giving Up”, Pleasure Pill’s new Jonathan Rado-produced single, is a perfect push-pull between the classic records the five-piece love and that DIY ethos. Key to the band’s connection with Rado was his enthusiasm: He was just as inspired to work with Pleasure Pill as they were to work with him. “The first time we even went up to the studio to meet him he was like ‘Man, I wish you guys had all the gear so we could lay down a track right now’,” recalls Luke. “We loved that Rado was so gung ho about jumping in right away.”
First played on the KCHUNG radio show by influential music supervisor Angela Asistio, “Not Giving Up” is a propulsive, jangling indie-rock track that feels indebted to the spirit of the band’s effusive idols while also recalling indie heroes like Real Estate and Beach Fossils. “I like the idea of using the traditions of rock and roll that are already established,” says Jonah. “‘Not Giving Up’ is a song about being optimistic in hard times—it’s a simple notion, but I’m not trying to confuse anyone about it.”
Luke says that “Not Giving Up” is “like an anthem” for the band; similarly, Jonah describes the track’s follow-up, “Wonder How”, as “a song of ours that is purely us”. “‘Wonder How’ is a little more whimsical than ‘Not Giving Up’, kind of all over the place—like, it was made with no boundaries,” says Luke. An anthemic pop-rock song that gives way to psych freakout, it’s bombastic and dizzying, in contrast to “Not Giving Up”’s open-hearted classicist streak. “Rado was really helpful in the studio, pushing us and bringing us a ton of new ideas,” says Luke.
Although “Not Giving Up” may be the band’s anthem, “Wonder How” is a perfect encapsulation of Pleasure Pill at this point in time—a doggedly, lovingly referential band who are still, nonetheless, deeply ambitious, fully committed to being the best they can possibly be. “We’re just trying to be all of our favorite bands,” says Luke. “There’s no point in being in a band if you’re not striving to be something. We’ve all been in shitty little punk bands—what’s the point of being in another one? We want to be the biggest thing, and reach the most people.”
