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.”