Sweet Pill is one of those bands whose songs and shows still carry the intensity and passion of the basement shows they came up in, even as their world, fanbase, and venues grow larger. Formed in Philadelphia’s strong DIY orbit, the emo/math-rock five-piece built their careers the traditional way: cutting their teeth in smaller rooms, relying on word of mouth, and crafting songs and messages that carry weight and travel much farther than the spaces where they were written and played. On their sophomore LP, Still There’s A Glow, band members Zayna Youssef (vocals), Jayce Williams (guitar), Sean McCall (guitar/vocals), Ryan Cullen (bass/vocals), and Chris Kearney (drums/vocals) channeled that raw collaborative energy into a bigger frame while keeping the scene in which they grew up in sight. Hit Parader sat down with all five band members to talk about the tour, the new record, and how, despite life’s struggles, there’s still a glow.
Hit Parader: With [Sweet Pill] being such a huge part of the Philly/Rowan DIY scene for so long, you’ve played some pretty quintessential rooms to the scene like Ukie Club, Underground Arts, and The [First Unitarian] Church. I’d love for you to tell me a little bit more about your first headline set at Union Transfer and what that meant to you guys personally after coming through the scene.
Ryan Cullen: For Union Transfer, for me, it was such a special experience. That was the first venue where I was going to real shows and seeing bands play. I think the first band that I actually saw at Union Transfer was La Dispute, actually, and then they were the first big band to take us out on tour. So that was a really cool full-circle moment, to be able to go and play in the room where I had seen La Dispute play, and then also having the experience of touring with them was incredibly special. That was really cool, to be able to be on stage. That’s one of my favorite venues to see a band, and it’s now one of my favorite venues to play.
HP: And then with 4333 [Collective] being such a big aspect of the scene in Philly, how important has it been for the band to stay connected with that grassroots aspect of the community? What would one thing be that you would want to preserve from the scene in Sweet Pill as y’all continue to grow?
Jayce Williams: I think that we come from the world of DIY, and we’re still in it in our own ways. I book shows with 4333, and we all have other different tie-ins. We play in other bands. We’re involved in other parts of the scene. I think that because we have the perspective of being a world-touring band now, and we play all these rooms like Union Transfer, and we’re at the next level above DIY, it’s really important to not forget where you come from in that sense.
We don’t take this shit for granted. There are a million bands trying to do the same thing, and we’re so grateful that we even have the opportunity to take that next step. This is our passion, and we actually get to do it. It’s become our job. Sometimes it feels like a job, but most of the time I’m holding onto that feeling from the DIY world. I want to tie it into Zayna’s message about the last song on the record – how you’re letting go of your childhood – but this is something that I don’t want to let go of. This is what got me here, just setting up a show in a basement. That’s literally how we started.
HP: On another note, your sophomore record, Still There’s A Glow, came out on March 13th! One thing I really love about the record is the emotional honesty and transparency while also tackling difficult themes. When writing these songs, how did you approach the heavier emotions in a way that was still healthy toward yourself?
Zayna Youssef: I think, at least for me, a lot of emo music is self-deprecating [laughs]. That’s an outlet for sure, a way to get those words out of you. But for me, a lot of my favorite music always has hopefulness to it. I think that’s something I’d rather promote, I think we all would rather promote. There are a lot of people who look up to Sweet Pill, and specifically, a lot of people who look up to me, just being a woman, or being an Arab woman, and being in emo. I think having hopefulness is important to keep the flame going.
It’s ironic, I say that because many of the album’s themes center around fire and burning, flames, smoke, extinguishing things like that ‘Still, there’s a glow’, there’s a notion that no matter how heavy it is, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I think, in general, it’s hard for me not to be honest when I write. Some people can write differently; for me, this outlet is the most honest I can be.
HP: With the theming of fire being pretty cohesive throughout the record, was that something that was initially planned when you wrote the first half of the record, or did it find its way in as you kept writing more of [the record]?
ZY: From my perspective, the way that I think Sweet Pill successfully writes music is that we start with the music first. We hear what we’re working with, and I can hear the emotion through the sounds that the guys are playing. Personally, I have been starting an angry journey, discovering this emotion of anger in its full force. I wrote somewhere in my notes app, “Next album is gonna have themes of fire, anger.” It’s deep in my notes app, but I did write that down.
And then we started writing, and “No Control” was the first song written, and it didn’t really have anything to do with fire [laughs], but musically it has this drive, this burn to it, and that’s kind of where it kicked off. It was a little premeditated, but also, I thought, “Am I putting myself in a box? I need to think outside of it a bit.”
JW: I have one thing to add to that. In our writing process for this record, we took a trip up to the Poconos to rent a cabin to write some music, and we wrote this song that’s actually going to be the third single coming out, called “Slow Burn.” It’s way different than our other two singles. It’s pretty fast-paced, and I remember when we were writing it, we called it a ripper. Then someone said, “A burner.”
ZY: ‘Slow Burn’ was the first word I wrote in that song.
JW: You probably said that immediately, yeah.
ZY: When we were demoing it, I heard the “I’m in a slow burn,” that’s the first part I wrote, and then the rest of the song followed. That’s also the third song we had written for the album. It went in sequential order: “No Control,” “Glow,” “Slow Burn.” That one, that was the first word. So it was very early on where this fire theme was developing, and then the rest of the song and album, I tried to fill in the gaps.
HP: And then, this was also the first release that was written fully by the band at the same time. How did that writing process affect the end outcome compared to Where the Heart Is or the Starchild EP?
JW: We wrote Starchild as a group, but that’s not a full record, so we don’t really count it. Where the Heart Is, some of the songs were written [individually], but they all came together as a group. But Still There’s a Glow is from the start, all of us wearing our chef hats, and we all put in input.
ZY: Starchild was an EP, and we kind of had Starchild written, and then the rest was, “Oh, we, what do we do with it? Is that a single?” So we pieced it together that way. Still There’s a Glow was, we’re looking at a blank page, and we’re like, “Okay, we need to create an album.” And that was the first time we ever did that, because Where the Heart Is was just jams that we had had under our belts, and introducing it to each member. Members had switched and changed until we finally established Sweet Pill, then we made Where the Heart Is. And so this is very different, and I think that it puts a lot of pressure on us.
Chris Kearney: Yeah, we actually had a lot of music written, and really wanted to narrow it down and fine-tune it to be the 13 songs. We probably had close to 30-ish ideas, and we just really wanted to come together and trim the fat and just make it as good as it could possibly be.
Sean McCall: As for our process for that, though, we went up and rented a cabin to come up with ideas from scratch two different times. And the rest of it is, it’s generally all five of us in a room with our instruments, waiting until somebody hears something that someone else is doing and being, “Oh, that’s really cool. Let’s build on that.” And then Zayna, your writing for the lyrics is a different process than that. But as far as for the music, it’s all five of us trying to structure it, and then Zayna thinking, “Oh, if I was going to write over this, we should cut this part in half. We should change this part to be twice as long.” Or, you know, Zayna has got all kinds of cool musical input on the actual structure of the song that way, too, which is super helpful for us.
JW: The way I describe it is, you know, when a painter paints a painting, it’s one person on one canvas, but writing a song collaboratively, the way we do, is five people painting on one canvas, and so you bump elbows, you have your own agenda, and you have your own style. And I think we work really well under that kind of pressure. And we do bump elbows, and we can argue the hell out of a part that we want to keep. But I think, from the beginning of this interview, we mentioned how Ryan mentioned how, you know, we are an emo band, but we all have these different influences, and we really sit outside of that box, too, and that’s really prevalent, because we all have input in the songwriting. Zayna doesn’t play an actual instrument. Her voice is an instrument, but she is just as involved in the songwriting as anyone else. And you know, it used to be just guitar boys, Sean and I would come up with an idea, and then we’d present it, and it would just be one riff, and then our song would come around it. But Ryan, one of our favorite songs on the album, the last song, “Letting Go,” started because Ryan plays something on the bass, and Chris has just as much input on melody, even though he’s playing an instrument that is not melodic, but he plays it melodically. I don’t know how to describe it.
SM: I like what you’re saying, Jace. Before I was even in Sweet Pill, watching all of these individuals, Ryan, Zayna, Chris, Jayce, separately or together, do their own things. They are all capable of doing something else completely, and doing awesome at it, but Sweet Pill works because there’s five of us who are kind of able to do that and, like you’re saying, Jayce, usually when you have that with other bands, I’ve seen it or heard it as, this part of the record sounds different because that person wrote this, and then another person wrote this half of the record, and it sounds like two different things. And I think we accomplish not doing that together, because it’s so collaborative, it doesn’t feel like two different records, but it definitely feels like you’re pulling a lot of influences into one place and kind of getting Sweet Pill, you know.
JW: I mean, and there’s no shade on this, but look at Modern Baseball. You have Jake songs, and you have Bren songs, right?
SM: And that works for them.
JW: Absolutely. They’re both, you know, great in their own ways. We just have Sweet Pill songs.
SM: Yeah, it’s a little different.
HP: That’s awesome. And Zayna, you were quoted as saying that ‘the process of the record came from a lot of trial and error, until the album shaped itself’. What aspect, song, lyric, anything of the album, are you most proud of that spawned from that specific cycle of trial and error that otherwise would not have been in the record?
ZY: Well, I will say the first time we went to the Poconos, we birthed “No Control” and “Slow Burn.” And then the second time we birthed “Glow.” And then we kind of birthed the rest of it in our practice space, and I birthed my end of it in the studio.
SM: I was just gonna say “Smoke Screen” was one that we forget about, that was kind of going in between yes and no. It almost didn’t even make the record. And now here we are.
ZY: Yeah, that’s a good example. That’s gonna be our fourth single, and that’s, the song is called “Smoke Screen.” And basically, the guys had one of the jams, and I was trying to write to it, and I was having a really, I was very blocked, writer’s block, whatever. I couldn’t figure out what to say. And, I mean, I knew what to say, but I didn’t know the best way to say it. But it kind of sat dormant for a while, and then, months later, in the studio, I just tried again after writing different songs, and it helped me figure out how to write this one that was sitting for a while. But yeah, there’s a lot of lyrics. A lot of lyrics came last minute, and a lot of lyrics came in the moment. A lot of lyrics were thought out for months.
JW: I want to just add to that a little bit, too, like what Chris said earlier, we had 30 songs written, and what I was mentioning before, how when we’re writing together with that metaphor, we do bump elbows. And I think it took Zayna saying to us, “Hey, I have this writer’s block on this stuff we’re working on,” which I think some of us were kind of, “What? This stuff rocks.” And then I’m so happy she said that, because then we wrote 12 more songs, which almost all of them made it on the record. And I think without that emphasis to kind of start from scratch again, we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now.
HP: With you guys scrapping almost an entire record, how did that feel in the moment, starting from scratch and just backburner a lot of material?
ZY: I think everybody has a different answer for that, because I felt good, but I think it was probably a little defeating for everyone. I mean, even after we restarted, I had to restart a million times myself, just lyrically.
RC: I’ll say that it was really hard to move past some of the songs that we were working on, I thought that they were really cool. But the way that Sweet Pill writes music is, we will take a part of a song, and then we’ll get to the end of that part, and we’re like, “Okay, so what should come next?” And we start pulling from our catalog of different riffs and jams that we’ve made. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are aspects of those songs that we scrapped that will make their way to new Sweet Pill songs in the future, after they maybe find a better home. So it’s still material that we have to play with. It’s good to have in our pocket for now.
JW: Yeah, going off of that, it is, in the moment, it was hard to start from scratch, but now in hindsight, I’m really grateful for it, because we do have that arsenal of stuff to pull from when we want to write again. And we had practice yesterday, and we have four ideas that we’re jamming on. [While] we’re rolling out our second album, we’re already working on the next thing, and there’s no stress involved. It’s just fun, and that’s how it should be. Writing this record was stressful for all of us individually, but we pushed it out, and I’m really proud of it.
HP: Just to start to wrap up, this might be a little cliché, but if the audience could have one takeaway or central message after listening to the new record, what would you most want it to be?
CK: That shit rocks [laughs]. Sorry, you can give a real answer.
ZY: That’s a real answer [laughs]. I was gonna say, ‘still, there’s a glow’ [laughs]. I guess, if you want a real answer after that is that life keeps going, and you have a choice more than you think you do.
HP: And then just a fun one to wrap up. What are you most looking forward to in 2026 from all y’all?
ZY: I’m excited to tour. We did a lot of touring, obviously, these last few years, but this last year, we were doing a lot of outside of America, which was awesome, but I’m very excited to play Sweet Pill shows to our home turf, just to feel that familiarity again. So I think that’s what I’m excited for.
RC: I’m excited to play rock music with my friends around the world.
SM: I’m excited for this damn record to come out [laughs].
JW: GTA 6, fingers crossed.
CK: I’m excited to exist with my friends and play some cool shows and have a good time.
ZY: I’m also excited to see some change happen, hopefully in this bleak, dark world.
SM: Fingers crossed.
ZY: Still, there’s a glow, baby.
Buy tickets to Sweet Pill’s upcoming tour here.
Catch a 4333 Collective show here.
Read the article in print in Issue 4 of Hit Parader Magazine.
Hit Parader #4: Brent Faiyaz
March 2026 — $12.99
