A day after Ari Up, iconic frontwoman of The Slits, succumbed to a long illness, her label Narnack Records has released what it bills as the band’s ‘final work’: a heretofore unreleased video for the song ‘Lazy Slam,’ off last year’s ‘Trapped Animal’ album.

After teasing fans with a couple 30-second clips from its forthcoming ‘Tour of the Universe: Live in Barcelona’ DVD and Blu-ray, Depeche Mode today offered up something a bit more substantial: a nearly 6-minute electronic press kit for the film, featuring performance footage, backstage clips and interviews with Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher.

German-born punk pioneer Ari Up — the frontwoman of The Slits who learned guitar from Joe Strummer and was John Lydon’s stepdaughter — died today at age 48 following ‘a serious illness,’ Lydon and her mother, Nora Foster, announced via Public Image Ltd.’s website.

With a deluxe reissue due out and U.K. tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ set to being next month, Heaven 17 last night appeared on the BBC2 program ‘Later Live… with Jools Holland’ — although the synthpop group opted to perform its later hit ‘Temptation,’ the U.K. No. 2 single off its sophomore album ‘The Luxury Gap.’

Los Angeles punk icons Social Distortion today announced that their seventh album — ‘Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes’ — will be released Jan. 18 on Epitaph Records and preceded by the release of first single “Machine Gun Blues” via iTunes on Nov. 9.

Saturday night, following a U.K. solo-acoustic gig, The Alarm’s Mike Peters discovered someone had walked off with his lyric book. And he wants it back: ‘Mike has been using this book extensively… to play lesser-known songs requested by fans,’ according to a post on the Alarm’s site.

The week’s new releases include a host of reissues from the likes of The Church (‘Of Skins and Heart,’ ‘The Blurred Crusade’), The Soft Boys (‘A Can of Bees,’ ‘Underwater Moonlight’), Dexys Midnight Runners (‘Searching for the Young Soul Rebels’), Gary Numan (‘Automatic’), The Wedding Present (‘Live 1989’) and Nick Heyward (‘North of a Miracle’).

Notable spins on tonight’s installment of ‘Dark Wave’ include not one but two cuts off The Teardrop Explodes just-reissued 1980 debut ‘Kilimanjaro,’ a track from Bauhaus’ 2008 reunion album ‘Go Away White’ and a lesser-played Yazoo album cut.

With his North American tour now underway, former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder today offered up a free Recoil multimedia EP — ‘Want: The Architect Mixes’ — that fans can download from Mute Records in exchange for a name and e-mail address.

Bassist Eric Avery, who has now twice quit Jane’s Addiction, has decided to open up for the first time about his experience on last year’s reunion tour by submitting to a series of video interviews conducted by long-running fan site Xiola.org.

Bob Mould’s turning 50 today, so to celebrate, here’s a clip of Sugar — whose debut, ‘Copper Blue,’ is arguably the former Husker Du leader’s finest moment — playing ‘Helpless’ on the BBC in 1993.

The surviving members of The Cars revealed their reunion this past summer by simply posting a photo of the band in the studio on Facebook; now they follow that up with the first musical proof they’re back together: a 1:13-long video clip of the new song ‘Blue Tip.’

Pared-down U.K. postpunk act Wire today announced it will self-release its 12th studio album — and third post-reunion effort — on Jan. 11, an 11-track collection called ‘Red Barked Tree’ that is preceded by a free MP3 download of the song ‘Two Minutes.’