Fangirl Diaries: Capturing Peach Pit’s Full-Circle Moment

The North Van-born indie rockers return to their roots with a sold-out hometown show and a new chapter that’s as playful and heartfelt as ever.

By Megan Magdalena

Photos by Megan Magdalena

Published on June 9, 2025

It’s a warm evening at Deer Lake Park, just 20 minutes down the highway from where Peach Pit first came together as high school friends in North Vancouver’s suburbs. Now, thousands of fans have packed the grassy hillside to see the hometown heroes headline the iconic outdoor venue—a full-circle moment that feels both surreal and deeply earned.

Before the screaming crowds and sold-out amphitheatres, there was The Railway Club, a now shuttered live music venue in downtown Vancouver. That’s where I first met Peach Pit, almost a decade ago. The lineup included Peach Pit, Jock Tears, and my own band at the time, Bratboy (back then we were still going by BB). “I remember hanging out in the green room at the Railway, which was just where the walk-in fridge was,” lead singer Neil Smith recalls with a laugh, as we sit together in the band’s trailer backstage at Deer Lake Park. The surroundings have changed, but the feeling is the same: just a bunch of buds hanging out.

After that Railway Club gig, we kept crossing paths on local bills, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that our friendship really took off. I had just left an abusive partner (great timing, I know), and while most of my friends were isolating with their significant others, I was solo and starting to go a little stir crazy. Neil was always down to hang. We’d go on long walks across the city and hold endless FaceTime chats with our crew. I don’t think I’ve ever fully told him how much that meant to me—so hey Neil: thank you.

After our nostalgic stroll through memory lane, I put on my music journalist hat to shift gears and get down to business: What—or who—do Peach Pit Fangirl over?

“We Fangirl over the Canucks,” Neil says without missing a beat, wearing a t-shirt that simply reads HOCKEY in the Hollywood font. “Brock Boeser, one of their top forwards, follows us on Instagram. I even pretended to be Chris [Vanderkooy, lead guitarist] one time—it was Chris’s birthday and the Canucks had just won, so I DM’d Brock like, ‘Yo man, thank you so much! Best birthday gift ever!’” Chris cracks up at the memory. “We even messaged him when we were in Minneapolis, where he spends the off-season, and invited him to our show,” Chris adds. Brock responded, but couldn’t make it—so now I’m officially manifesting a Brock Boeser x Peach Pit collab.

“What do I Fangirl over?” drummer Mikey Pascuzzi asks, turning to his bandmates. “You got really excited yesterday when someone brought puppies to the venue,” Chris teases. “Okay, true,” Mikey concedes, “but I think I’d Fangirl over a day off.” The whole trailer erupts in laughter. I look over to Peach Pit bassist Peter Wilton: “Fontaines D.C.,” he says immediately, as the rest of the band nods knowingly. And Dougal McLean, Peach Pit’s honorary fifth member and all-around utility guy? The answer is obvious: disc golf. “Get me a match with Calvin Heimburg,” he says, dead serious.

A lot of people Fangirl over Peach Pit—and I’m one of them. Over the years, I’ve watched them grow from local indie darlings to selling out massive venues. Just when I think they can’t get any bigger, they go and sell out Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. A venue I only knew from the South Park 25th anniversary concert with Primus and Rush. When I ask Neil what that milestone felt like, he compares it to The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder’s bizarre and brilliant HBO show: “It felt like we got to be a band cosplaying as a band that sold out Red Rocks.”

In 2024, Peach Pit released their fourth and latest album, Magpie—and it quickly became one of my favourites. Something about this era feels exciting and new. Their live show is visually stunning, and with longtime friend and collaborator Lester Lyons-Hookham documenting the tour, we’ve been blessed with behind-the-scenes vlogs that are as funny and endearing as the band themselves. From secret hometown sets to a trip to Canada’s largest mall, the vlogs are pure chaotic charm. “It makes us want to do more stuff on tour,” Chris says. “Suddenly everything’s a write-off!” “Let’s do it for the vlog—case in point,” he adds, pointing at his ears. “We all got our ears pierced in Switzerland.”

Something else I loved about Magpie was the dance remix of “Am I Your Girl,” a track that became an early crowd favourite despite never appearing on a release until Magpie. There were attempts to record it for previous albums but it never felt right, until now. I love a good song with some lore and this one does not disappoint. “From a dance music perspective, I think that would be something we’d like to lean into a little bit more.” Chris tells me. “And I hope we do more features in the future.” He says referencing the version of “Did You Love Somebody” featuring Sir Chloe that also appears on Magpie.

“Nothing we do is really planned,” he continues. “It’s just done in the moment—‘a guest feature could be cool,’ ‘a dance mix could be cool’—so we go for it.” That spontaneity is part of what makes Peach Pit so special: they just go for it.

Opening their set at Deer Lake Park with a blistering cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” that melted into the title track “Magpie,” their recent homecoming set was electric. I saw kids doing cartwheels to “Drop the Guillotine” and adults sneaking flasks out for “Give Up Baby Go.” From the side stage, I watched Neil return solo for the encore—just him and an acoustic guitar. He told the crowd how Peach Pit began: he and Chris were at Pemberton Music Festival, high on molly, when he worked up the courage to show Chris a song he’d written—what we now know as “Peach Pit.”

He played it for us the same way Chris first heard it: voice, guitar, and a whistled solo. And when he stepped away from the mic for the final chorus, the crowd screamed it back:

“It’s been a long season through.
All this rotting fruit with you.”

In that moment, I saw my friend as thousands of fans probably see him: larger than life. That same song I heard at The Railway Club all those years ago was now being sung by a sea of people in his hometown.

Peach Pit deserve every bit of the success they’ve earned. They’re not just great musicians—they’re best friends. “We’d all still be friends even if we weren’t in a band,” Neil says.

Chris adds, “To make a career and creative partnership work takes hard conversations and effort. I think we’re lucky that those traits come naturally to us—but we also benefit from how much more openly men’s mental health and friendships are discussed now.”

And that, dear reader, is why I am a Fangirl for Peach Pit.