Manchester-bred rockers James today announced they’ll release their next album — La Petite Mort, the first taste of which, “Frozen Britain,” you can stream below — this June, a record that bassist Jim Glennie says “stretched us and the songs and pushed us to new heights in craftsmanship and intensity.”

Full details aren’t promised until Wednesday, but Echo & The Bunnymen today “dropp(ed) the veil slightly” on the band’s forthcoming 12th studio album, revealing the title — Meteorites — and artwork for the project via the group’s Facebook page. A full tracklist and release dates presumably will follow later this week.

Echo & The Bunnymen today revealed that the band’s upcoming 12th studio album — produced by Killing Joke bassist Youth — is nearing completion and will be formally announced soon, and that frontman Ian McCulloch “feels it’s the band’s best work for a very long time.”

Peter Buck is back with his second solo album, another vinyl-only release — ambitiously titled I Am Back To Blow Your Mind Once Again — that he’ll support with a short round of dates later this month in the Midwest and South opening for and then backing roots-rocker Alejandro Escovedo

It’s been a busy few months for David J: The bassist recorded a new version of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and is putting together a new album called An Eclipse of Ships. Add to that a new role as bassist for the band Stellarum, with which he’s just recorded a slow-burning cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.”

The Cure’s two sold-out shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March are being billed as just the beginning of “a very busy 2014” for Robert Smith and Co., with the band today announcing plans to release the long-delayed companion to 2008’s 4:13 Dream and a series of live DVDs — and a third ‘Trilogy’ tour.

As “Breaking Bad”/”Better Call Saul” star Bob Odenkirk let slip in a tweet last Friday, the reunited Afghan Whigs are indeed releasing a brand-new studio album, with Greg Dulli and Co. announcing today that they are returning to Sub Pop Records to release Do To The Beast, their first album in 16 years.

It’s hardly a secret that the reunited Afghan Whigs have been recording: The band’s Facebook page has been posting photos of Greg Dulli and Co. in the studio for months now. Still, there’s been no announcement of a new album. Which is why fans are excited about a tweet yesterday from actor/comedian Bob Odenkirk.

After several years of bemoaning that no label would have him, Morrissey has signed a “worldwide recording agreement” with Harvest Records, which announced the former Smiths frontman will release a yet-to-be-recorded new album in the second of 2014 and plans to resume tour this year.

The Buzzcocks late last week launched a PledgeMusic crowdsourcing campaign to help fund the recording and release of their first new studio album in eight years, saying the fundraising effort — which is already halfway to its goal — will allow the legendary punk act to release its new music much faster than before.

Clan of Xymox — the onetime 4AD act is still centered around founding member Ronny Moorings — return next month with a brand-new studio album entitled Matters of Mind, Body and Soul and are set to precede the record’s release with what’s being billed as the group’s first concert in Los Angeles in more than a decade.

In a wide-ranging new Q&A with fans, Morrissey reveals that he’s about to start recording a new album, he’s midway through writing his first novel and that he once tried and failed to get David Bowie to record a duet of the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.'”

David J, the former bassist of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, has launched a Kickstarter campaign seeking to raise $30,000 from fans to fund the completion of his next solo album — An Eclipse of Ships, described as “a journal of the heart and a paean to Woman as muse.”