‘I’m just so desperate to create”: Bug Teeth’s PJ Johnson on reading, writing, and Micrographia

Over Zoom, lead singer, PJ, of Leeds band Bug Teeth, appears on my laptop screen. Sconce lights glow warmly behind them. Their room looks much cosier than mine, which has only an old IKEA spotlight lamp to beat back the November dark. What follows is an informal chat doubling as an interview; a musing on the Bug Teeth as a project, writing music, and being a young artist in Leeds.

PJ Johnson began releasing music independently under ‘Bug Teeth’ in 2022. Drummer/guitarist George Orton, drummer/guitarist Sonny Mitchell, and synth-player Alex Calder, members of the band Gladboy, were also releasing music in Norwich at the time. With most of the current Bug Teeth band originating in Norwich, I was curious to find out how they ended up as part of the Leeds furniture.

Me, George, and Sonny all did English Lit – that’s how we met in Norwich. Adam [Bentham, Bug Teeth’s bassist] went to uni here, to do production. I met the guys in uni, they were in a band called Gladboy. I became so obsessed with this band. I was making music on my own at this time. I hated making music on my own, because I was scared, and I just knew I wanted to expand the band. I thought, “these are the coolest musicians in Norwich”. 

PJ laughs, saying “George is literally in this room”. He then leaves as PJ waves goodbye. Maybe the praise was too much. 

Gladboy decided as a band that they were going to move to join Adam in Leeds. They went up. I carried on doing my Masters [in Prose Fiction at UEA] and then I joined everyone in 2022. 

I first came across PJ for their writing, rather than their music. In June, they read out their short story ‘Clean’ at Small Distractions Club’s Literary Salon. Small Distractions Club is a project, created by Rhiannon Kane, about the intersection between books and music, with local artists often performing their poetry and prose. Rhiannon also interviews members of local bands about the books they read. “The writers you love are inspired by the music they listen to; the musicians you love are inspired by the books they read”, she often says. I remember hearing PJ’s surreal yet raw story as I was lost in the crowd.. Both blunt and funny, ‘Clean’ conveys both supernatural horror and earthly themes as its protagonist Melanie’s skin falls off, is peeled off, and sometimes fed to bins. Over time, this disposed skin forms ‘Melanie 2’. In ‘Clean’, PJ contemplates the body in terms of beauty, relationships, intimacy, shame, and exposure. 

I wrote [‘Clean’] in October 2022. So, again, it’s been bloody ages. I’ve been editing it recently though because it’s part of a collection of short stories I’ve been writing called ‘Duckling’. One of the stories in there I wrote on my undergrad, when I was nineteen. It’s been ongoing for ages. I’ve had all of these stories on the backburner […] [‘Clean’ has] been in my head this whole time. It wasn’t until the Small Distractions Salon in Leeds where I got such good feedback and it felt really good to perform and revisit that story. I have an agent now and it made me super excited to finish the collection. […] Maybe that will be in the world at some point.

I’m just so desperate to create that I will prioritise that above anything else in my life. 

I’ve always told everyone that I was going to be an author, since infant school. It’s always been what I’ve wanted to do. I’ve always written. Music: I didn’t really realise until I was a teenager. I only released music when I was eighteen, in my first year of uni. It wasn’t on the cards but then it became a surprising, fun thing. Luckily, I got to focus on it for a while. I hope it will continue to be a focus in my life.

Having arrived at writing music later than prose, I asked PJ what spurred the interest.

I’d made music for a couple of years. It was extremely DIY, all made on Garage Band. And then I went through two break-ups in a row in my first year at uni. I was eighteen, so I was having a weird emotional time. I had no money as well. I was going to the pub one night and I was like, “you know what, I’m just gonna put a song on Bandcamp and see if anyone will buy it so I can have pub money”.

PJ received a vote of confidence early on – gig requests, plays on BBC Introducing. “Immediately, I was like, “wait, people think this is good? Maybe I can do more of this”. A few Bandcamp uploads later, they released an EP. PJ built a name for themselves in Norwich, playing locally, then “asked the boys to join”.

I made a swift pivot back to books; I couldn’t help myself. PJ is a “voracious reader”, always “wanting to be consumed by a book”. I ask them what they enjoy reading: “Something more transgressive. Something a bit more experimental. The last book I finished was ‘All Fours’ by Miranda July. She’s an inspiration for how I write. I’m just really into transgressive, feminist fiction”.

Bug Teeth’s debut album, Micrographia, forms the backdrop to our discussion in the week before its release. Its singles, ‘Warp & Weft II’, ‘Topiary’, and ‘Thin Circle’, are a natural progression of their earlier singles and EPs – ethereal, with a strong groove and pace, building to the crescendo of their first LP.

I already feel so proud of it and it’s not even out. […] I’m very excited for it to be in the world.

It’s the biggest project we’ve all made together. The writing process for every song was quite different. There’s some stuff on there that just came out of improvising together and seeing if we could make a song. ‘Collections’ on the album is a really good example of that, it just came out of a jam. The opening track, ‘Tapeworm’, came from me and Sonny playing on a little thumb piano. ‘Thin Circle’ was something that Alex and I worked on together. As soon as we made it, we were like, “that needs to be on the album”.

All of us have such different musical backgrounds and influences, but they converge in such an interesting way. Ultimately, we want to make music that we would listen to. 

My parents would always play us music. My dad would play Björk and Simon & Garfunkel. My mum really liked The Fugees. As soon as I started to find music for myself, I looked for quite ambient things. I was really into electronic music. As soon as I found Björk for myself, and Brian Eno, all of that kind of stuff, I knew that that was the music I wanted to make. In uni I started listening to Broadcast, Yo La Tengo, Talking Heads, Cocteau Twins. Those artists are all mashed together in my head.

Bug Teeth opened English Teacher’s This Could Be A Remix Album, released in October. They breathed a different life into ‘Albatross’, stamping it with the Bug Teeth mark.

We got a message. They asked us to do it. 

We were like, “fuck yeah, okay”.

“The deadline’s in two weeks”.

“Oh my god, alright”.

That was the process. We didn’t hear anything else.

Alongside Bug Teeth, Baxter Dury, Working Men’s Club, and Matt Maltese, among others, have made the tracks of Mercury Prize winning This Could Be Texas their own.

We asked them, “is this an album? Who else is going to be on it?”, and they replied, “oh yeah, just Fontaines D.C”. What the fuck. We thought it was just going to be a friends album, clearly not. That freaked me out.

This Could be a Friends Album: Bug Teeth and English Teacher go back a long way. 

We met at Glastonbury. We all hung out together that weekend. I immediately got on with everyone. That was 2022, the year they played Glastonbury. 

Then, they asked us to go on tour with them at the start of 2023. It was right when we released our EP [Lucky Me, Lucky Mud]. It was our first full band project. Very special tour, very special friends, amazing people to know. Even if we weren’t friends, I respect them so much as musicians and what they stand for. It’s so nice that they always invite people to be part of their success. I owe a lot to them as a band, but they’re just great people.

Bug Teeth are taking Micrographia on tour at the end of November, playing in Bristol, Birmingham, London as well as Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club for their second headline show.

We headlined [Brudenell] when we released ‘Topiary’. It felt insane. It’s our favourite venue ever. I remember the first time we played there, for a headline festival a couple of years ago, and even that felt so cool. It’s so special to get to play at a place where you actually go and watch bands that you love. That will never stop being so cool to me. Getting to headline it again for our album does feel really, really special. These are all songs that we wrote in Leeds. We feel like we’ve been made in the city. I feel like that anyway. I’m very excited to have a big old hometown gig. 

Bug Teeth’s Brude headline doubles as a sendoff, as PJ and George will soon be moving to London. While PJ and George are leaving, Bug Teeth aren’t going anywhere. “We already have a lot booked in for next year; we’re not slowing down any time soon”.
Micrographia is available to listen to as of the 21st November 2025. PJ celebrated with a “big Dublin party” and saw My Bloody Valentine the next day. Not at all jealous.

Words by Rosie Nowosielski