Zayna Youssef is on her lunch break, halfway through a sandwich and finishing a shift at a vinyl printing facility that produces car decals. In a few hours, she’ll be back in Sweet Pill mode, packing up and heading out on the road. “I make designs, and I also help print them,” she says cheerfully. “So I’m just working one last day this week before we go on tour.”
That balance between ordinary life and a band gathering serious momentum sits at the heart of Sweet Pill’s story right now. Since releasing their debut album ‘Where The Heart Is’ in 2022, the Philadelphia/New Jersey quintet have spent the past few years on the road, touring with bands like La Dispute and The Wonder Years while steadily building a devoted audience drawn to their blend of emo catharsis, pop melody and explosive live energy.
Back home, though, things look reassuringly normal. “America in general is just on fire,” Zayna sighs, before adding that the arrival of spring has softened things slightly. “Philadelphia and New Jersey – the weather’s been getting nicer, so everybody’s just been outside. It’s been really nice driving around and seeing people walking again because we’ve been sheltered from the cold for what feels like five years.”
“Maybe you should stop blaming the world and start pointing a finger towards yourself”
Sweet Pill’s second album, ‘Still There’s A Glow’, began taking shape in March 2024 during a writing trip to the Poconos, a wooded stretch of Pennsylvania a couple of hours outside the city. Cabins, forests and a band working together in isolation sounded like the perfect conditions for making a record. Instead, the process started with a wall. “We had around twenty solid demos,” Zayna says. “But I just wasn’t connecting. I had major writer’s block.”
Rather than forcing something that didn’t feel right, she asked the band to keep going. “I asked if we could keep writing more,” she explains. “It’s kind of hard to ask that when you have a group of people that are really stoked about what they just wrote.”
Sweet Pill’s collaborative spirit carried them through that moment. “They were very gracious with me, and we kept writing,” she says. Those early songs haven’t disappeared either. “They’re not necessarily gone. We’re actually picking them up again and messing around with them. It might end up becoming LP3, which is kind of cool to think about.”
By December 2024, the band were writing again with renewed focus, and many of those later sessions became the backbone of ‘Still There’s A Glow’, which was recorded in July 2025. At the centre of the album sits a personal shift that changed how Zayna approached songwriting.
“My headspace at the time wasn’t great,” she says. “There was a lot of pressure on us to release something better than ‘Where The Heart Is’. That album already took us to so many great places.”
Therapy became a turning point that unlocked the rest of the record. “I started therapy when we started writing more music again,” she explains. The difference is clear across the album’s songs. “For instance, ‘No Control’, ‘Glow’ and ‘Slow Burn’ were written before I started therapy, and they’re very self-deprecating. But then you have songs like ‘Sunblind’, ‘Tough Love’ and ‘Letting Go’, which are more hopeful.”
That contrast forms the emotional core of the album. “There’s a lot of gratitude in those songs,” she says. “Like realising you’re alive and not taking that for granted. Opening your eyes and deciding to be a little more grateful.”
Earlier songs confront harder truths. ‘No Control’, the first track Sweet Pill completed for the album, takes aim squarely at its writer. “It’s quite literally me calling myself out,” Zayna says. “It’s about how I had no backbone and no control over the bad decisions I might have been making.”
That level of honesty isn’t comfortable, but it’s central to the record. “It is scary to be direct with yourself,” she says. “The whole point of this album is admitting things that might be hard to admit. Maybe you should stop blaming the world and start pointing a finger towards yourself.”
Listening back now, some songs still hit with particular weight. ‘Tough Love’ remains one of the most personal. “Those lyrics are some of the realest lyrics I wrote,” she says. One line continues to resonate: “I am scared, but not a coward.” Hearing it again has become its own reminder. “Sometimes I need to hear that myself. When I listen to it, I go, yeah – that’s right.”
Other songs revealed their meaning only with time. “There are songs where I hear them now, and I can’t believe I wrote them,” she laughs. “Because I didn’t know what I was talking about at the time.” Looking back, though, the meaning becomes clearer. “‘Holding On’ and ‘Letting Go’ are like that. I look back now and realise I was really embracing change.”
“If you have a platform, you should use it”
Musically, ‘Still There’s A Glow’ represents a new chapter for the band as well. Sweet Pill first formed in college with Zayna and guitarist Jayce Williams. “Jayce and I actually started Sweet Pill as a school project,” she explains. “It was for a business and music class.”
As the band evolved, Sean McCall, Ryan Cullen and Chris Kearney joined the line-up, helping shape the group into the five-piece heard today. This new album is the first created entirely by that line-up from the beginning. “We had a blank slate,” Zayna says. “We were like, okay – we have to create an album from nothing.”
The process turned out to be remarkably natural. “Writing music together is actually the easiest thing we could do,” she says. “We sit in a room twice a week, someone brings a riff or an idea, and then we all expand on it. Everyone’s speaking and sharing. Nobody’s coming in with a finished song.”
That shared process feeds into the album’s central imagery of fire and rebuilding. The title comes from a simple but powerful idea. “When most of a fire is out, but the embers are still glowing, you can start a fire again,” Zayna explains. The metaphor stayed with her throughout the writing process. “Even at my lowest points, if something is still there, you can do it again.”
For Zayna personally, that glow comes from the relationships and small details that make life meaningful. “I have a little black cat,” she says warmly. “I look at him, and I’m like – we built a relationship together. My mom and dad, my friends, my family. Everyone who’s ever cared about me.” None of those connections are guaranteed, which makes them matter even more. “No one owes you anything,” she says. “Nobody has to care. So the people and things that do – that’s my glow.”
Years of touring have also shaped how Sweet Pill approach their music. Playing alongside bands like La Dispute and The Wonder Years offered lessons that fed directly back into the songwriting process. “Soupy from The Wonder Years once told me that when you’re writing songs, you’re writing for that moment live when the room sings it back to you,” Zayna recalls. The advice stuck. “I kept that in mind while writing my parts this time around.”
Touring also forced her to rethink how she treated her voice. “You might not be able to hit these high notes every day,” she laughs. “Touring and singing every day is hard. So I tried to be a little more gracious with myself.”
Beyond the practical side of performing, those tours reinforced the idea that musicians should use their voice. “La Dispute taught me to speak up for what you believe in,” she says. “The Wonder Years, too. If you have a platform, you should use it.”
Sweet Pill’s platform is growing quickly. A new album, a busy touring schedule and an expanding audience are pushing the band into their biggest chapter yet. Zayna has a few goals in mind for what comes next. “I want to be on late-night TV,” she says. “I want to go for Tiny Desk. The sky’s the limit.” Each milestone simply opens the door to another one. “Every time we accomplish a goal, it just means there’s a bigger one waiting.”
Outside the band, life remains pleasantly low-key. Zayna spends downtime immersed in games like Assassin’s Creed, while the confidence and theatricality of RuPaul’s Drag Race have become unexpected sources of inspiration. “Drag queens’ confidence is infectious,” she says. “Watching them create a character and just own it inspires me, especially for my stage persona.”
At its core, Sweet Pill’s mission remains simple. “We’re just a bunch of people that love to play music,” Zayna says.
The band want their shows to feel welcoming, a place where people can step away from the pressures of everyday life. “The world is a pretty hard place to live in,” she says. “So when you come to a Sweet Pill show or listen to our music, we’re trying really hard to make it a welcoming world.”
That feeling sits at the centre of ‘Still There’s A Glow’. Even when things feel burnt out or uncertain, a small spark can still start something new, and Sweet Pill are keeping theirs alive.
Sweet Pill’s album ‘Still There’s A Glow’ is out now.
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