When she screams, it’s personal

Alicia Bognanno’s voice begins as a soft, come-hither growl, but when she hits the chorus and the distortion kicks in, it transforms into a raw, cracking howl. It’s a little bit Courtney Love, a little bit “Exile in Guyville”-era Liz Phair, with perhaps a hint of riot grrrl venom thrown in. Bognanno’s band Bully, which stops by the Bartlett on Tuesday, traffics in the kind of propulsive, catchy, to-the-point fuzz-pop that would have been right at home in the post-grunge ’90s.

“I’ve always written my own music … well, not always, but in college,” Bognanno said. “My goal was, when I was nearing the end of college, to go full force and have a project of my own where I was the primary songwriter.”

Bognanno and Bully drummer Stewart Copeland (not to be confused with the drummer of the Police) previously played in a Nashville power pop band called King Arthur, and Copeland encouraged Bognanno to start her own project after he heard what she was working on.

“We got Bully together because I had written some songs,” she said. “I was like, ‘I want to play these,’ and he said, ‘You should just do your band and I’ll play drums for it.’ ”

The band’s other two members fell into place almost immediately – bassist Reece Lazarus was the booker at the Stone Fox, the music venue where Bognanno worked sound, and guitarist Clayton Parker was Copeland’s college buddy – and they started touring in 2013. Bully will be releasing its first album, “Feels Like,” next month, and it’s a record that Bognanno wrote, produced and engineered herself.

“Feels Like” was recorded and mixed at Electrical Audio, a Chicago recording facility where Bognanno had previously interned. The studio, which values analog production over digital, was founded by revered record producer Steve Albini, whose work with the Pixies, Nirvana and the Breeders so clearly informed Bully’s sound.

“I was really lucky and fortunate that I got to intern at such an awesome place,” Bognanno said of her time at Electrical. “It’s a great learning environment, because the studio is in great condition and everybody really cares about it.”

Bognanno’s lyrics are too specific to not be personal, painting vivid pictures of 20-something ennui, summertime heartbreaks (“Blame it on freedom, space and open doors,” she sings on “Sharktooth”) and one too many nights of getting too drunk and “throwing up in your car.” On the song “Trying,” she challenges her own unrealistic anxieties: “I question everything / My focus, my figure, my sexuality / And how much it matters or why it would mean anything.”

“Most of it is life experience,” Bognanno said of the way she writes her lyrics. “It’s pretty personal. … It’s really therapeutic. I just want to write about something that means a lot to me. I don’t think I’d be able to sing or scream about something every night that wasn’t super personal to me.”