The members of New Order have agreed to release the seven songs left over from the sessions for the band’s 2005 swan song ‘Waiting for the Sirens’ Call,’ bassist Peter Hook tells Slicing Up Eyeballs, saying the move should help make the group’s acrimonious split ‘a little cleaner’ and finally ‘draw the line’ under the break-up.

Although he’s become an in-demand guest vocalist, Robert Smith says in a new interview that he’s refocusing on The Cure and vows he won’t do another collaboration until he completes the long-promised second half of 2008′s ‘4.13 Dream’ — the so-called ‘Dark Album’ that he once suggested could land in spring 2009.

Electro-industrial icons Skinny Puppy this weekend announced the release this fall of the long-delayed ‘Handover,’ the group’s 11th studio album and first in more than four years.

Al Jourgensen has reunited Ministry three years after vowing he was finished with the industrial-metal juggernaut, and says he’ll record and release a new album dubbed ‘Relapse’ before the end of the year and play a limited run of U.S. and European concerts in 2012.

Peter Gabriel’s foray into classical music continues this fall when the singer follows last year’s orchestral covers album ‘Scratch My Back’ with a collection of symphonic reworkings of his own material called ‘New Blood’ — plus the ‘New Blood: Live in London in 3 Dimensions’ concert movie filmed this part March.

Erasure today unveiled the artwork and tracklist for its first new album in four years, the nine-song ‘Tomorrow’s World’ — which, when it’s released this fall, also will come in a special deluxe edition with a second CD loaded with as-yet-undisclosed “remixes, demos and a bonus track.”

Next week, Liverpool’s The Wild Swans — the brainchild of former Teardrop Explodes keyboardist Paul Simpson — will release their first album in 21 years and only their third overall, a 13-track collection called ‘The Coldest Winter For a Hundred Years’ that features veterans of Echo & The Bunnymen, Spiritualized and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Although they only issued two studio albums during their mid-’80s career, The Housemartins — the UK’s self-proclaimed ‘fourth best band in Hull’ — this week will be anthologized with at least their fourth best-of album, although it’s not quite clear whether the new set features any previously unreleased material.

Rumors have swirled all year that the studio-shy Kate Bush is working on new music and now we have the most concrete evidence yet: Mark Poston, chairman of EMI Music Australia, tells a newspaper Down Under that he’s expecting to release a new Kate Bush album in November.

The Human League has set a belated U.S. release date next month for its first album in a decade — ‘Credo,’ which arrived in the U.K. this past spring — and has announced a 17-date North American tour this September that will see the act pairing up with Men Without Hats and The B-52s.

Australian synth/rock act Icehouse — best remembered in the U.S. for their 1987 hit ‘Electric Blue,’ co-written by John Oates — this summer will release a comprehensive best-of called ‘White Heat: 30 Hits,’ which, over two CDs, will chronologically present each of the band’s 30 singles, and also will include a DVD with 32 music videos.

Before taking the Pixies back out on the road this fall for more ‘Doolittle’ dates, frontman Black Francis will embark on a short solo-acoustic tour of his own — beginning tonight — and he’ll follow that up in September with a brand-new studio album he recorded as a duo with singer-songwriter Reid Paley.

Blondie — still anchored by original members Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke — will embark on a 23-date North American tour this September and October to coincide with the belated U.S. release of their ninth studio album, ‘Panic of Girls.’