The Bug Club

The Bug Club are back with a new album. It's been a whole seven months since their last. Where have they been?

Every Single Muscle, the band's fifth LP, arrives May 29th, 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.

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 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.

The Bug Club’s name does a good job of introducing the band and their music: a tight-knit, collaborative effort focussed on telling tales of the everyday that we often take for granted, shot through with humour and riffs-a-plenty. Comprising the creative trio of Sam Willmett (guitar/vocals), Tilly Harris (bass/vocals) & Dan Matthew (drums), The Bug Club formed in 2016 in the little-known rock n' roll hotbed that is Caldicot, Monmouthshire. The band were picked up by Bingo Records and released their first single 'We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’ in Feb 2021. The announcement of the EP Launching Moondream One followed.

In Nov 21 the band released the 'Pure Particles' EP including the singles 'The Fixer' and 'My Baby Loves Rock & Roll Music'. So far in 2022 the band have offered the multi-song track 'Intelectuals' and the Two Beauties release featuring 'Lay Down Your Roses' and 'Pretty As A Dog In The Light'. The second half of 2022 will bring us the debut album and more!!!