Bruce Pavitt has been played on NTS in shows including Freedom To Spend, featured first on 8 February 2023. Songs played include Walking On Air.

Bruce Pavitt is the Chicago-born founder of record label Sub Pop.

Pavitt started a fanzine entitled Subterranean Pop in Olympia, Washington in 1980, about American independent rock bands. A total of three cassette compilations were released through the fanzine. In 1983, Pavitt moved to Seattle and started a record store, Fallout, as well as write a Sub Pop column for The Rocket, and host an independent-label specialty show on KCMU. 1986 saw the release of Sub Pop's (the "-terranean" was dropped earlier from the name) first LP: the Sub Pop 100. Green River's Dry As a Bone EP followed in 1987.

Pavitt initially met Jonathan Poneman in 1986, when Poneman invited Pavitt for an on-air interview on KCMU, in order to promote Sub Pop 100. In 1987, Kim Thayil of Soundgarden suggested that the two join forces. Pavitt and Thayil had attended Rich East High School in Park Forest, Illinois together in the mid-1970's. Subsequently Soundgarden's Screaming Life EP was released and the grunge phenomenon quickly followed.

In 1996, Bruce Pavitt resigned from Sub Pop to raise a family.