Skinny Puppy will embark on a 29-date North American tour early next year dubbed “Shapes for Arms” in support of the band’s current album Weapon, a concept record described as commentary on “the concurrent glorification of the gun culture and simultaneous horror at the devastation guns can cause.”

Earlier this year, U.K.-based label Occultation Recordings took the unusual step of surveying fans of The Wild Swans about what they’d like to see included on deluxe vinyl reissues of the band’s third album, 2011′s The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years, and a 2003 compilation of ’80s radio sessions, demos and rarities,

Tonight’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio celebrated the best of 1988, featuring music from They Might Be Giants, Talking Heads, Marc Almond, Pixies, The Godfathers, R.E.M., Erasure, The Waterboys, Sonic Youth, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jane’s Addiction and more.

Morrissey may have bemoaned he had no U.S. publisher for his just-released autobiography — cleverly titled “Autobiography” — but that’s no longer the case. The singer announced today that G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of his U.K. publisher Penguin, will put the best-seller out in the U.S. on Dec. 3.

The pleading must have worked: With Simple Minds having just wrapped up their first North American tour in 11 years — a short run of just seven dates this past month — frontman Jim Kerr says “there are already discussions taking place to hopefully bring Simple Minds back for more shows next summer.”

Erasure this week released the first single off its upcoming Christmas album Snow Globe, a synthpop take on the medieval Latin carol “Gaudete,” which was a folk hit in 1973 for Steeleye Span. The duo also debuted a new stop-motion animation video created by Martin Meunier and Tonya Hurley.

Two months after dropping a surprise cover of Arcade Fire’s “Ready to Start” on fans, Tears For Fears is back this week with another unlikely makeover: a new cover of Hot Chip’s 2006 electro-pop favorite “And I Was a Boy From School” (which was re-titled “Boy From School” when it was issued as a single).