ill peach – Crash Course Dummy
Somewhere between overheard conversations and internal monologues, ill peach found the heart of their sophomore album. The LA-trio who first crossed paths in high school in Minnesota, are now boldly stepping into their biggest chapter yet with their forthcoming, sophomore album EAVESDROPPING, out June 26 on Handwritten Records. Expanding on the band’s emotionally incisive songwriting, the record plays like a candid snapshot of human connection, weaving together fragments of overheard dialogue, late-night overthinking, quiet intimacy, and the complicated dynamics that unfold between people.
Today the band has shared the last single ahead of the album’s release, the hazy and intimate “CRASH COURSE DUMMY.”
“‘CRASH COURSE DUMMY” was written about that one person in a social setting who’s trying so hard to fit in you can feel it from across the room,” explains lead singer Jess Corazza. “The loud, unfiltered type where the desperation almost becomes uncomfortable to watch. Like nails on a chalkboard. During the making of EAVESDROPPING, which involved a lot of people watching, I kept noticing this character everywhere. Someone overexerting themselves just to connect while somehow drifting further away from everyone in the process. I weirdly relate to that feeling. I’m pretty introverted, and loud environments can completely drain me. I’ve walked away from so many conversations feeling like I was performing instead of actually connecting. That’s where the song concept came from.”
With EAVESDROPPING, ill peach sound closer to themselves than ever before, without getting too comfortable. The album’s 10 tracks find them in the space between chaos and catharsis, building a world that’s slightly crooked on purpose. Embracing the mess, embellishing, experimenting, and fine-tuning a sound that refuses to sit still – the new record is a perfect distillation of who the band is and where they’re going next.
“‘EAVESDROPPING” is an album that immerses you in the experience of being a fly on the wall, privy to the strange, unsettling, and yet strangely beautiful tapestry of human interactions,” explains lead singer Jess Corazza. “In the middle of making this album, I lost my father in 2024. And even though every bone in my body was screaming with grief I put all my creative energy towards completing this album. Which in turn felt cathartic and therapeutic because it forced me out of the heaviness and into something that felt like colorful, life giving energy. I’ve always had a bad habit of eavesdropping but this time around it helped me step out of my grief in a way and almost place myself in someone else’s story for a moment. Call it dissociation but whatever it is I’m so fucking proud of the album. And maybe all those feelings of loss can go towards the next one.”
The album features previously released singles – the full-bodied “SMALL TALK,” “CULT DADDY” and “MOLLY’S NOT A FRIEND.” The new music follows their 2023 debut THIS IS NOT AN EXIT (Hardly Art/Sub Pop).
Comprised of Jess Corazza, Pat Morrissey, and Jesse Schuster ill peach began long before they had a name. Bound less by genre than by obsession, their shared love of music spilled into wildly different corners—indie bands, concert choir, musical theater, an a cappella jazz group—often comically incompatible, yet magnetized by the same strange pull. They carried those friendships through college, kept trading songs, kept circling one another, quietly laying the groundwork for a band that didn’t exist yet.
Years later, Corazza and Morrissey reunited in the studios of New York City, building careers as professional songwriters and collaborators for artists like Icona Pop, SZA, Weezer, Pharrell, and Big Freedia. Working inside rooms designed for polish and restraint, they learned the machinery of the industry from the inside. What they kept hearing, though, was that the music they were making together was slightly too left-of-center—too crooked to slot neatly anywhere. Eventually, starting their own band started feeling inevitable.
The turning point arrived in 2021 with a song called “GUM.” Built from nostalgic guitar tones nudged into the present by synths and drums, the track rewired the band’s creative center. For Corazza, it was the first time she said “fuck it” and let the song behave like a diary entry—written under the weight of an ever-shifting industry, a resistance to playing the game, and the cyclical drag of depression and anxiety. “GUM” held ambition and exhaustion in the same breath. Releasing it cracked something open, revealing a sound ill peach could finally recognize as their own.
Creatively, the band thrives on productive disagreement. Corazza remains tethered to the restless lineage of the Meet Me in the Bathroom era—bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Radiohead, and Garbage—music that still feels relevant in the best way. To keep her instincts sharp, she often steps away from new releases altogether, grounding herself instead in absorbing classical and jazz. Morrissey is her counterweight: relentlessly curious, tuned into cultural shifts, new sounds, and whatever’s mutating in real time. Where Corazza protects the past, Morrissey reacts to the future. The songs survive somewhere in the collision.
With the official addition of Schuster—folding back into the project after years of shared history—ill peach snapped into a trio. Schuster brings a third instinct into the room: a pull toward unconventional chords, DIY experimentation, and pushing songs just far enough off the grid to feel alive. Together, the band operates inside a shared but unruly musical landscape, one defined by contradiction, curiosity, and emotional honesty.
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