The Specials finally are making good on a promise to tour the U.S., today announcing they’ll play two dates at the South By Southwest festival in March as part of the first leg of a larger North American visit — but the shows will not feature co-vocalist Neville Staple, who is leaving the band due to “ill health.”

As we reported last week, genre-straddling hard-rock act Living Colour will celebrate the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking debut album ‘Vivid’ with a new reissue and a tour centered around the 1988 album — and the band has now begun rolling out North American dates on that planned spring trek.

Once and future(?) Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore will release the self-titled debut album from his new band Chelsea Light Moving on March 5, Matador Records announced this morning, and will follow that release with a 20-date U.S. tour that has a conspicuous South By Southwest-sized gap in the schedule.

Pigbag, the short-lived U.K. funk-infused post-punk act best known for its jam “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag,” returns this March with ‘Year of the Pigbag,’ the first new record in three decades from the newly reformulated act. Check out the horn-fueled track “Disco Mama” from the comeback album.

Echo & The Bunnymen spinoff Poltergeist — an instrumental trio that reunites guitarist Will Sergeant with former bassist and founding member Les Pattinson — today announced it will release a debut album titled ‘Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder)’ in March then perform a series of U.K. dates later that month.

With his rescheduled two-month U.S. tour set to kick off Wednesday night in Long Island, N.Y., Morrissey dropped by “The Late Show with David Letterman” tonight to perform “Action Is My Middle Name,” one of a handful of new and as-yet-unreleased songs the singer debuted last year and continues to perform on tour.

The final tracklist for the The Replacements’ upcoming ‘Songs for Slim’ EP — featuring four songs recorded by Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, plus a fifth by Chris Mars — was unveiled tonight on the project’s Facebook page amid reports that an auction for the 250 limited-edition singles could start next week.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured music from The Only Ones, MIssion of Burma, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Monks of Doom, The Housemartins, Midge Ure, The Cure, Kate Bush, Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three and many more.

Thought to be retired from music and the public eye, David Bowie tonight announced he will release The Next Day — his first new album in a decade —next March, a collection preceded by the single “Where Are We Now?” that’s available immediately via iTunes and can be heard via its accompanying video.

With Morrissey’s rescheduled U.S. tour set to open Wednesday, the singer today announced the addition of two more shows to the two-month trek: a Feb. 27 concert at the Balboa Theatre in San Diego, and a tour-ending show on March 9 at San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom.

The Primitives this March will release ‘Everything’s Shining Bright: The Lazy Recordings 1985-1987,’ a two-disc, 40-track set collecting the band’s early singles, a handful of demos, a 1987 live set and a “lost” album comprised of an aborted early session for the band’s 1988 debut ‘Lovely.’

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds late last week premiered the official video for “We No Who U R,” the first single off the band’s upcoming 15th studio album. As you can see from the clip posted above, the Gaspar Noé-directed video is fairly minimalist, tracking a shadow through a forest. ‘Push the Sky Away’ arrives Feb. 18.

This week’s new releases include just one notable title: a new 4CD/1DVD box set from The Lords of the New Church that includes a disc of 16 studio rarities recorded in 1987 and 1988 plus, on three subsequent CDs, live concerts recorded in 1982, 1983 and 1986. The fifth disc is live DVD from 1988.