With his new album, ‘National Ransom,’ out in the U.K. this past week — and due to arrive on these shores on Tuesday — Elvis Costello dropped by the studios of BBC’s Radio 4 on Thursday to chat with host John Wilson and play this track, ‘Jimmie Standing in the Rain,’ off the new record.

In honor of Halloween, Sirius XM’s 1st Wave will expand this Sunday’s ‘Dark Wave’ to 12 full hours, a veritable ‘goth-a-thon’ promising ‘darker classic alternative music from artists like The Cure, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and more.’

Throbbing Gristle today announced its break-up ‘for the time being,’ saying frontman Genesis P-Orridge informed the other members this week — on the eve of several scheduled European concerts — that ‘he was no longer willing to perform’ with them.

The first new album in a decade-and-a-half from electro-industrial powerhouse Nitzer Ebb finally will be released on CD in the U.S. next month — albeit in expanded fashion, with a new song and a handful of mixes thrown in — as the band embarks on a fall tour of North and South America.

Download a free MP3 of ‘Not In Love,’ Crystal Castles’ new version of its cover of ’80s New Wave act Platinum Blonde’s 1984 single, now featuring lead vocals by The Cure’s Robert Smith.

The Jesus and Mary Chain’s William Reid is 52 today, and to mark the occasion, we present this clip of Reid and his younger brother Jim bringing the noise on British television in 1985, performing ‘Just Like Honey’ and ‘Inside Me’ off of their debut ‘Psychocandy.’

The Pixies this afternoon formally launched their new live concert series with a free giveaway of the band’s 2004 set at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Download it here.

Back in August, we posted four high-quality video clips that had just surfaced from the 1995 co-headlining tour by David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails — and today we’ve learned that the filmmaker who put those fantastic clips together has uploaded a 40-minute rough cut of additional footage.

The remainder of Devo’s 2010 live dates have been postponed after guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh sliced his right thumb ‘to the bone’ on a shard of glass, severing a tendon and requiring emergency surgery, the band announced today on its website.

Jim Kerr reports that Simple Minds recently hit the studio to record tracks — including a ‘New Gold Dream’-era castoff — that are earmarked for both ‘an extensive compilation’ due out in early 2011 and what eventually will become the band’s 16th studio album.

Today is Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon’s 52nd birthday, and to mark the occasion — and with a tip of the hat to the current batch of reissues — we present this fabulous clip of DD playing its single ‘Notorious’ on an Italian television show in 1987. I

Today, Crowded House releases its new greatest-hits collection in the U.S., and to mark the occasion, the generous folks at EMI/Capitol are providing us with a copy of ‘The Very Very Best of Crowded House’ to give away to one lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs reader.

The reunited Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark today debuted the video for ‘Sister Marie Says,’ the second single off ‘History of Modern,’ the synthpop group’s first new album in 14 years.