Philadelphia’s Dead Milkmen recently finished recording their first new album in more than 15 years, a record tentatively titled ‘The King in Yellow’ that’s expected out sometime this spring.

Throwing Muses today wrapped up initial recording sessions for the 4AD band’s first new album in eight years, a process that frontwoman Kristin Hersh and her bandmates have documented through a series of short, in-studio video clips.

Chicago indie-guitar heroes Eleventh Dream Day return this spring with their 10th studio album, ‘Riot Now!,’ which the band’s label, Thrill Jockey Records, is hailing as “a call back to the urgency of 1988’s ‘Prairie School Freakout.'”

Mike Watt will release his third punk opera in March — the 30-track, Minutemen-inspired ‘Hyphenated-Man’ — and then embark on a massive North American tour in which he and his band The Missingmen will play the album ’51 times in 52 days.’

As we reported earlier this month, Sonic Youth is preparing to release its soundtrack to the French film ‘Simon Werner a Disparu’ (aka ‘Lights Out’) as SYR9 in the long-running Sonic Youth Recordings series — and today the band revealed the release date, tracklist and cover art for the project.

After collaborating on a full-album cover of Yanni’s ‘Live at the Acropolis’ last summer, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has now tapped Beck to produce his third solo album, titled ‘Benediction’ and due out sometime in 2011 on Matador Records.