Morrissey this week confirmed the full six dates of his December tour of Australia and New Zealand, which the former Smiths singer say will wrap up his 2012 tour. In addition to the previously announced concerts in Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney come shows in Melbourne and Wellington — plus a second date in Sydney.

Their box set may be on hold, but Australian rockers Midnight Oil do have a new release up their sleeves: In November, the band will issue a new 2CD, 36-track best-of titled ‘Essential Oils,’ a truly career-spanning overview of the band’s catalog, sampling cuts from 1978’s self-titled debut through 2002 swan song ‘Capricornia.’

Thirty years ago today, Simple Minds released their fifth studio album, ‘New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84),’ considered by many to be the band’s commercial turning point after it hit No. 3 on the U.K. charts on the back of singles such as “Promised You a Miracle,” “Glittering Prize” and “Someone, Somewhere in Summertime.”

As we’ve reported, The Mission will document its ongoing 25th anniversary reunion this fall with a limited-edition 3-disc CD/DVD set called Silver that features two full concerts recorded last year and part of a third on either DVD or Blu-ray, plus a bonus CD featuring near-complete audio from one of the gigs as well.

Boston post-punk legends Mission of Burma released Unsound — their fifth studio album and fourth post-reunion effort — last July, but here’s the first video off the record, a clip for the song “Semi-Pseudo-Sort-of Plan” that premiered Wednesday over at Pitchfork. Check it out right here.

Journalist Hobey Echlin took advantage of his face time with New Order during a 2001 interview to grab Peter Hook’s four-string and play the bassline to Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in front of the man who wrote it — only to be told he was doing it wrong. So Hook took the bass back and showed Echlin how it’s done.

This fall, Miles Copeland will bring MTV’s beloved “120 Minutes” precursor “I.R.S. Records Presents The Cutting Edge” to DVD with a new compilation featuring “the absolute highlights and rare moments” from the show, featuring appearances by the likes of R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Robyn Hitchcock and more.

Atlanta’s Swimming Pool Q’s — a Southern jangle-pop contemporary of R.E.M., The B-52s and Pylon — are appealing to fans via a new Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to reissue their two major-label releases from the mid-’80s on CD for the very first time, along with myriad bonus items to tempt backers.

For fans disappointed that the online debut of the late John Peel’s record collection didn’t feature actual music off those platters or broadcasts by the legendary British DJ, here’s the real deal: a streaming collection of 458 episodes of Peel’s show that totals 846 hours and spans the years 1967 to 2004.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured music by Hoodoo Gurus, Fields of the Nephilim, The Vaselines, Camper Van Beethoven, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Dance Society, The Style Council, Dinosaur Jr, Paul Westerberg, Gene Loves Jezebel and more.

For fans, one of the highlights of the Sex Pistols’ upcoming ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ box set is the “lost” 1977 studio demo of “Belsen Was a Gas” with John Lydon’s vocals, the controversial Holocaust-themed song billed as the only “original Sex Pistols composition of the era thought not to be recorded.”

Having just wrapped up their North American tour, the reunited Dead Can Dance — co-founders Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard — this morning offered fans a free download of “Opium,” a track off ‘Anastasis,’ the band’s first new album in 16 years — which you can grab in exchange for an e-mail address.

Peter Gabriel is whetting fans’ appetites for his upcoming So 25th anniversary deluxe box set with a new video that offers an animated walk-through of the eight-disc set, which features four CDs, two DVDs, two vinyl records and a 60-page book. The box set is due out Oct. 23.