Peter Murphy and the Burning Shed label are honoring late Japan and Dalis Car bassist Mick Karn on what would have been his 55th birthday Wednesday with a “Download Day,” urging fans to buy Karn’s music in tribute to musician and to show that there is demand for it as a way of keeping his CDs in print.

New Model Army returns this fall with its 12th studio album and first in four years, a 14-track set dubbed Between Dog and Wolf on which the band debuts its new bassist and of which bandleader Justin Sullivan declares, “Sonically, this is the best album we’ve ever made, whilst creatively it has opened lots of new doors.”

The House of Love will follow up this year’s brand-new studio album She Paints Words In Red with a live CD/DVD package that will be recorded at a pair of special concerts at a 200-seat club in London this November and released on Cherry Red Records next year, the reunited band recently announced.

The unlikely pairing of Elvis Costello and The Roots this week debuted the first fruit of their new collaboration, premiering on Pitchfork the single and lyric video for “Walk Us Uptown,” the first single off the forthcoming Wise Up Ghost. The album is due out Sept. 17 on Blue Note Records.

Just days after manager Gary Morris told Australian media that Midnight Oil had been offered up to $200,000 per show to reunite and tour the U.S., the band has issued a statement saying it had no current plans to reform in the wake of Peter Garrett’s newfound unemployment, and that Morris was resigning his position.

Fans of reclusive songwriting genius Paddy McAloon spent a good part of last month debating the authenticity of a 10-song album called The Devil Came A Calling that mysteriously appeared online June 10, but now the verdict’s in: It is, indeed, a new Prefab Sprout album and it’s due out this fall.

Kitchens of Distinction will release its first new studio album in 19 years — the band ‘s fifth overall and first since 1994′s Cowboys and Aliens — on Sept. 30, and the band’s label this morning debuted the first taste of the new KOD music in the form of a 30-second snippet of an instrumental version of the album’s opening track.

This week’s new releases include new studio albums from Hüsker Dü’s Grant Hart, Tears For Fears’ Curt Smith and The Teardrop Explodes’ Julian Cope, plus vinyl reissues from Cabaret Voltaire, The Birthday Party and Deacon Blue, a new remix collection from Section 25 and an Icehouse best-of.

Faye Hunter, the founding bassist of the Mitch Easter-led jangle-pop outfit Let’s Active who played on the band’s 1983 debut EP Afoot and follow-up full-length Cypress in 1984, died Saturday night in Advance, N.C., of an apparent suicide, the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer reported tonight.

Tonight’s edition of “Dark Wave” on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave featured music from Lords of the New Church, The The, Big Black, Cranes, Nitzer Ebb, Flesh for Lulu, Lead Into Gold, Joy Division, Asylum Party, Cocteau Twins, And Also the Trees, Love and Rockets, The Cure, Soft Cell and much, much more.

Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This week featured posts about The Mission, Morrissey, OMD, Pixies, The Psychedelic Furs, The Dream Syndicate, Big Country, Simple Minds, Adam Ant, David Bowie, Johnny Marr and more.

Morrissey’s on-again, off-again South American tour is now, once and for all, canceled, according to a morose note from the singer in which he seems to be threatening retirement, writing, “Cancellations and illness have sucked the life out of all of us, and the only sensible solution seems to be the art of doing nothing.”

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark announced it will cancel the remainder of its North American tour — concerts that had been planned for Detroit, Minneapolis and Chicago — after drummer Malcolm Holmes suffered a medical emergency that forced the band to cut short tonight’s show in Toronto.