A dose of Pleasure Pill interweaves British rock and roll with San Diego.  

Jonah Paz, vocalist for Pleasure Pill, recruited his brother and his bandmates by performing in shows with several different bands. Paz’s brother, Ethan, plays rhythm guitar, John McCain plays bass, Dom Friedly plays drums, and Justin Bordwell is the second guitarist.  

Coming together with experience of being in a band, playing shows, and releasing music has shaped their sound. With loud guitars, strong rhythm and big vocals, they knew the direction Pleasure Pill was headed towards. 

“The real transition was realizing this was something that we were wanting to take further than we’ve ever taken any other band. To commit ourselves to it. And that just came with time and believing in the music,” Jonah Paz said. 

Pleasure Pill takes inspiration from a broad spectrum of Britpop bands. Among them are Oasis, The Kinks, The Verve, and The Stone Roses. The Beatles also serves as an an influence for them. Paz started writing songs for the band in 2021, right in time for beginning to perform their first gigs in 2022.  

Paz cites San Diego as a big part in the identity of Pleasure Pill. San Diego is filled with people who love different types of music. He and his brother were exposed to music that you would discover on your own when you were in high school or in college.  

“It’s tradition, you know. Rock and roll and the whole point of our band is to not reinvent anything or be renegades of a new sound or something like that.  We’re just trying to showcase what rock and roll music can be to the public because it seems it’s been kind of on the bottom level of the totem pole as far as important cultural importance,” Paz said.  

When Paz is writing songs, he writes in a way that anyone can relate to. He detaches himself and tries not to write so much about personal experience. He recognizes that songwriting is an outlet to express ourselves, like a diary.  

“Subconsciously, some of my personal life for sure seeps into the music. But I have detached myself from it because I’m trying to serve the listener. I don’t like artists or bands that speak about a specific thing that could only really happen to them.” Paz continued, “Whenever I sit down to write, I really try to just speak on the universal truths of life that anyone can kind of relate to.” 

Paz takes care of the skeleton of the songs. Then the band rehearses and plays around to hash out the right sound. With textures, delays, and different sounds, they head to the studio with Eric Garcia. A friend of the band since high school, Garcia is the main producer of the band. 

Pleasure Pill’s mindset from the beginning was set on being as timeless as they can. This was reflected with their first album, Hang a Star, released on June 7 of this year. It features songs from the beginning of the band, some ranging from 2021 and 2022, while showcasing being a young dude in the 2020s.  

“I was in LA today, and I listened to the record for the first time in maybe a month or so. It just holds true. I’ve been making music for a good chunk of my life, and I’m always the first one to be over a thing that I did. But this record just holds so true. All we wanted to do was make a great record, and we definitely did,” Paz said. 

Paz hopes that people find Hang a Star refreshing, that they talk about it because they haven’t listened to anything like it in a long time, no matter their age.

San Diego has had an interesting response to the band. There was a pushback at first from the community, because the audience wasn’t familiar with the band’s attitude. But by putting their head down, making great art, and making great music, opportunities started coming their way. Pleasure Pill recently was on tour with another band from San Diego called Benches. 

Paz describes a sense of camaraderie when they went on tour with Benches. The latter, as a bigger band, has been involved in better tours, and in 2025, they performed at Chicago’s Lollapalooza in August.

Virality, though, is not central to Pleasure Pill’s mission—it’s the music.

“I don’t think it’s anyone’s desire when they start a band to be a viral thing, nor to make viral content. There definitely needs to be a balance and both have to coexist. But I do think that live shows and seeing people in a band on stage and in your face, especially the way we do it, it is like nothing else,” Paz said. 

In the next five years, Paz wants to be working on album number seven if they are still together. He concedes that he doesn’t want to overstay Pleasure Pill’s welcome, rather wanting to pierce the culture with three records and go out on top. Afterward, they can keep playing music, after they’ve concluded their victory lap.  

Success is different for every artist and band across the world. For some it’s money, for some it’s fame, and for some it’s recognition. For Pleasure Pill, success is releasing Hang a Star. Success is people buying the record, enjoying it, and loving it.  

“It doesn’t matter if we’re the biggest band now, next year, the year after, or in 10 years,” he said. “We all know that our music and our band has its place in history; that’s just a fact. We will see our day, and if we don’t, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with the universe or something because it’s just an impossibility. So success for us is to have done the great thing that we know will last forever.” 

Photos taken from Ticketmaster, Local Wolves, and Rock at Night | Interviewed on September 25, 2025