Caldicot, Monmouthshire, Wales’ finest, The Bug Club, will release Every Single Muscle, their incredible new album on CD/LP/all DSPs worldwide on Friday, May 29th, from Sub Pop. The 18-track longplayer features today’s first single, “Watching the Omnibus,” along with approximately 17 other tight, anxious, and engaging garage-punk numbers like “Yours (If You Want Me),” “A Good Day for Dying,” “Make It Count,” and “My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat.”  Every Single Muscle was produced and mixed by Tom Rees at Rat Trap Studios in Cardiff, Wales, and mastered by Mikey Young.
 
Every Single Muscle is available to preorder now on CD/LP/all DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com in North America, Mega Mart Europe in the UK + EU, and your local record store, will receive the limited Loser Edition opaque blue (NA) and blue vinyl (UK/EU)(all vinyl color editions whilst stock lasts!). Every Single Muscle also features what is likely the band’s most BONKERS cover art to date, illustrated by Ross Willmett.
 
The Bug Club has also announced headlining UK dates for May and June 2026, plus a May 23rd support slot opening for Super Furry Animals in London. Additional live dates will be announced soon.
 

The Bug Club are back with a new album. It’s been a whole eleven months since their last. Where have they been?
 
Every Single Muscle, the band’s fifth LP, arrives 29th May 2026 via Sub Pop, making it a hat-trick for the Welsh duo and their esteemed Seattle-based patrons. Since Very Human Features, which emerged in June of 2025, the non-stop tour has seen the BBC 6 Music and KEXP favourites ping-pong across the Atlantic like they used to the Severn Bridge. Various festival slots in the summer kept them from having any sort of holiday - who needs one when you live in Wales anyway? - until it was time to head back to the writing room.
 
So that answers that first question. Not that you’d have otherwise known. Ever self-effacing, songwriters Sam (guitar, vocals) and Tilly (bass, vocals) go as far as to claim that they’ve been sitting around “doing nothing at all” during track “It’s Our Manager David.” That’s clearly a lie. Every Single Muscle gets off to a full-throttle, chugging start with “Miss Wales 2012,” referencing a competition both Tilly and Sam have actually won. Dead serious. It’s the first of many sub-two-minute tracks on the album, setting the tone for The Bug Club’s punkiest offering yet and recalling both the short, sharp snaps of their very first singles and the grunt of recent releases. So packed is the album with wall-to-wall riffs and lyrical hooks rammed into tight confines that Sam actually asks permission to squeeze in a solo during second track “A Good Day for Dying.” He’s given two seconds.
 
Not that we’re short-changed, though, because Sam asks again later on and is granted more. Across eighteen tunes there’s enough classic Sam/Tilly guitar interplay to satisfy even the most vociferous Bug Club club member and firmly refute the band’s own claim that they are only “just about technically proficient on our instruments.” “Full Range of Motion” has a choppy rhythm that sits atop drummer Tom’s tight beat and serves to remind us all of Minutemen, for a minute. “Make It Count” brings sweet melody and call and response, while “All My Clothes Fell Off” allows for a slower paced ballad that builds to a crescendo that would not be out of place in the world of classic rock. “Cut to Black” combines a Sparks-esque falsetto and Tilly’s melodic bass playing with a rhythm something close-ish to what Klaus Dinger used to do for Neu! And closer “My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat” sees them doing a bit of a left turn and swapping out guitars for keys. This record’s an exercise in efficient maximalism - the musical equivalent of your dad packing the car for a holiday. Bring what you like; space is tight but they’ll get it in there somehow.
 
On to the words, because with these guys those are important. While Very Human Features did an excellent job of pointing at everyday things and highlighting their absurdity, on Every Single Muscle The Bug Club look more closely at themselves. Not so much in an introspective way, though. More in a way an alien might probe a captive specimen on an intergalactic gurney. Horror movies get their “body” subgenre, now garage rock albums get theirs too. Self-interested in an entirely new sense of the term, the human form and condition is prodded and inspected from every angle throughout the course of the album. “Look Like Me” sees them singing about their own appearance, while on “How Can We Be Friends” they are preoccupied with others’. “Every Single Muscle” itemises organs as if they belong on a shopping list, and both “Make It Count” and “Pretty as a Magazine” bemoan the fact people don’t know what to do with their own bodies. Altogether, we get a sense of surreal detachment from the self that sets up the ever-present ennui-laden humour; the last song sees Sam announce he’s “bored of being human.” The Bug Club seem almost suspicious of the concept of being a person - as if they’ve woken up in a costume they didn’t want to put on and cannot take off.
 
Initially comprising the songwriting core of Sam Willmett (vocals/guitar) and Tilly Harris (vocals/bass) with Dan Matthew (drums), The Bug Club started plying their trade in 2016. They were signed by UK label Bingo Records in Autumn 2020 and first single “We Don’t Need Room for Lovin” was released in February 2021, followed by EP Launching Moondream One. It quickly established The Bug Club as the tongue-in-cheek and live-focused antidote to the previous year’s penned-in pandemic drudgery. BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley was an early champion.
 
Pure Particles followed, whose vinyl release included a board game brimming with cult references. Fed up with the conventional approach they then released “Intelectuals”: a standalone track that was actually a five-track “song suite” like some kind of streaming-model-snubbing, Telecaster-bashing answer to Bach. Highbrow musos took a lyrical beating for the ages. Second standalone release “Two Beauties” marked release number two for 2022 and built up to the appearance of debut album Green Dream in F# by October. The following January they decided to pull their fingers out, get some disguises and support themselves on tour as Mr Anyway’s Holey Spirits. A live album documented this, then they got abstract with titles and put out the picture disc Picture This! By the autumn of 2023 it was time for forty-seven track, poetry-infused double album Rare Birds: Hour of Song.
 
During a trip to America they caught the eye of Sub Pop, just in time to get them on board to serve up a beefy slab of garage-punk on On the Inner Workings of the System, gaining an appropriately beefed-up stateside following in the process. The partnership proved fruitful, and with Sup Pop firmly in The Bug Club club they got cracking on Very Human Features. Is three the magic number? Probably not. But Every Single Muscle - number three for The Bug Club and Sub Pop - certainly comes close enough to convince your average strange human person that it might be.

The Bug Club
Every Single Muscle
 
Tracklisting:
1. Miss Wales 2012
2. A Good Day for Dying
3. Make It Count
4. Cut to Black
5. Full Range of Motion
6. Pretty as a Magazine
7. Look Like Me
8. How Can We Be Friends
9. Every Single Muscle
10. Shiny and Wet
11. Semi-Automatic
12. In My Short Life
13. Watching the Omnibus
14. It’s Our Manager David
15. Yours (If You Want Me)
16. All My Clothes Fell Off
17. Third Best Friend
18. My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat

Sub Pop has snagged the acclaimed young musician Hayden Pedigo with an unorthodox recording contract. Among other things, this union will spawn a number of new albums, one of which Hayden is currently hard at work on.
 
In celebration of this news, Hayden is sharing the oddly specific details of his contractual agreement, along with tour dates and details of an upcoming NTS Live residency.
 
First, the agreement:

Hayden Pedigo and Sub Pop are ever so pleased to confirm that these terms were found mutually agreeable, and this agreement is now law.
 
Hayden Pedigo’s upcoming international live shows for 2026 include a headlining performance on Thursday, March 26th in Brooklyn, NY at St. John’s Lutheran Church, and festival appearances on Saturday, March 28th in Knoxville, TN at Big Ears Festival, and Thursday, April 9th-12th in The Hague, Netherlands at Rewire Festival.
 
Hayden Pedigo will also host a new, four-month-long residency titled Amarillo Highway With Hayden Pedigo on NTS Live beginning February 25th.
 
More on Hayden Pedigo…
Hayden Pedigo: man, myth, master of disguise; un-picker, finger-picker, absurdist, perfectionist. The unorthodox contender for Amarillo City Council, subject of the film Kid Candidate, and creator of the acclaimed albums for Mexican Summer: Letting Go (2021), The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored (2023), and his latest release, I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away (2025).
 
He’s an innovator of the instrumental genre. A challenger of the stereotypical, son of a truck-stop preacher, he backs up a cherry red Silverado under his own smiling, Brylcreemed and Nudie-Suited billboard. His foot hesitates above the gas pedal as a cloud of dust rises. Where between beaming advert and disillusioned entertainer might his truest self lie?  I’ll Be Waving…his intentionally maximalist, genre-resistant work of warped instrumental Americana – is an exclamation point at the end of an accidental trilogy of records. The album was selected for “Best Albums of 2025” lists from All Music, Nialler9, No Ripcord, PASTE, and Pitchfork. The latter says of the record in its “Best New Music” review, “On his most majestic and sincere record yet, the Texas guitarist plays with grace and power, evoking the gentle emptiness of the American West.”
 
2025 also saw the release of In The Earth Again, the well-received collaborative album with Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile, released on the Computer Students label. That album also saw year-end praise from the likes of Beats Per Minute, The Needle Drop, Treble Zine, and Stereogum, who called the album “…the two acts find a cohesive middle ground in this brutally dystopian guitar music, with Pedigo’s fingerpicking contrasting Raygun Busch’s seared vocals. The result almost feels like a southern gothic novel: devastating, vast, yet oddly warm all the same.”

Today, February 17th, Alan Sparhawk is releasing two enthralling new songs, “JCMF” and “No More Darkness.” Both tracks were written, composed, and produced at 20 Below Studio in Duluth, MN, with Nat Harvie mixing. They feature Sparhawk on Guitar/Vocals, Eric Pollard on Drums and Sparhawk’s son, Cyrus Sparhawk, on Bass. 
 
Sparhawk shares about both singles:

“JCMF”: This is a song I’ve had for a few years, but couldn’t find the right way to play or record it. We started playing it last year in the Alan Sparhawk Solo Band, on tour, and with each month, the sentiment of the song only increased. I feel like the song has become a rebuke against the fascist/authoritarian streak that several world leaders have taken on and to the people who have been blinded into supporting them. 

“No More Darkness”: Inspired by a David Lynch quote (“Don’t fight the darkness. Don’t even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes. Turn up the light of pure consciousness. Negativity goes.”) This song reminds me to choose light in especially dark times. We were ending our set with this tune all year, and it is my wish for everyone, especially those who feel alone.

Sparhawk will be donating a portion of his royalties from these songs to the International Institute of Minnesota.
 

Sat. Feb 21 - Red Wing, MN - Big Turn Music Festival
Sun. Mar. 29 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Music Festival (w/ Trampled by Turtles)
Sun. May 03 - Krems an der Donau, Austria - donaufestival
Mon. May 04 -  Prague, Czechia - Cultural House Krakov
Wed. May 06 - Kortrijk, Belgium - Wilde Western

Alan Sparhawk
 “JCMF” and “No More Darkness” 

Sub Pop Records is extremely proud to announce the return (for our 20th year!) of the Sub Pop Loser Scholarship. Further details on the scholarship are below, and even further below is some clarification on what we mean with all this “Loser” business.

Sub Pop Records is offering a grand total of $18,000 in college scholarship money to three eligible high school seniors. There are three scholarships—each for $6,000! As longtime, proud losers ourselves, we’re exceedingly happy to be able, in some small way, to help further the education of art-enthused misfits from the NW. Individuals from all cultures and communities are encouraged to apply. Applicants must be residents of Washington, Idaho or Oregon, and graduating seniors on the way to full-time enrollment at an accredited university or college. We are looking for applicants who are involved and/or interested in music and/or creative media and arts in some way. However, you do not need to be pursuing an education in the arts.

To apply: you must submit an essay, one page or less, using any combination of the following questions as a guide (or write something completely your own, be inspired and creative!). Please list the school you are graduating from and the school you plan to attend in the fall at the top of your essay along with your contact information.

- What are you doing in the arts/music field in your community?

- What does being a Sub Pop ‘Loser’ mean to you?

- What are your influences and/or who inspired you to become involved in the arts?

- Describe your biggest failure and explain how it has brought you closer to your goal(s).

- Discuss a special attribute or accomplishment that sets you apart.

- How has your family or community background affected the way you see the world?

- Why should you be the Loser winner?

Applicants are strongly (!) encouraged to send digital links and/or provide hard copies of their artwork, photos of community involvement, radio show links, videos, etc. along with their essay (we have never had a winner who submitted only an essay w/no extras). However, please be aware that Sub Pop will not return any of this material, so please don’t send originals. Sub Pop will give equal opportunity to all applicants who fit the criteria outlined above.

The deadline for applications is Monday, March 16th, 2026.

Please send all submissions and attachments to scholarship@subpop.com by Monday, March 16th. We will announce the scholarship winners during the first week of April.

What we talk about when we talk about “Loser.”

Here at Sub Pop Records, we use the word “loser” a lot. You may have noticed. We’ve printed it on things we sell (hats, shirts, stickers, mugs, and more!), we call the first, colored-vinyl, limited-edition pressings of the records we release the “Loser Edition,” and every year since 2007 ish we’ve awarded tuition money to college-bound NW high school students through the “Sub Pop Loser Scholarship.” And, it’s possible we take for granted that you guys catch our drift and understand what we mean when we’re all “loser this,” and “loser that.” So! The following…

 Sub Pop’s use of the word “loser” goes back to the foundation of the label and is meant as a celebration of unabashedly being ourselves without conforming to any preconceived ideas of “normal.” To be a loser is central to the very idea of underground art and culture - all of it happening and thriving outside of the mainstream, and not necessarily looking for a way in. Bruce Pavitt’s “New Pop Manifesto” in the 1st issue of Subterranean Pop included, “The important thing to remember is this: the most intense music, the most original ideas… are coming out of scenes you don’t even know exist… Only by supporting new ideas by local artists, bands, and record labels can the U.S. expect any kind of dynamic social/cultural change…” And, since 2007 or so, with the Loser Scholarship, we’ve been adding students to that list, and putting our (or, our co-founder, big boss and biggest loser ever, Jonathan Poneman’s…) money where our mouth is. Sub Pop Records strives to bring attention to music and art from the fringes that might otherwise remain marginalized. And, in that same spirit, through our annual Loser Scholarship, we’re looking for art-enthused misfits in NW high schools, losers like us, to help them pay for college. We stand proudly with and support the misfits, weirdos and losers, because we believe that when we’re able to proudly be nothing other than our true selves, we have the ability to make the world stronger, smarter and better.

So, good luck, Losers! And, again, please send all submissions and attachments to scholarship@subpop.com by Monday, March 16th.