Johnny Marr returns this October with what’s being billed as his sophomore solo album, the 11-song Playland, a collection of new music built “around a common theme of ‘songs that move at the speed of life’” that arrives just 18 months after the release of his first official solo record, The Messenger.

Midge Ure returns this August with his first new solo album in more than a decade, a 10-song set called Fragile that he’ll promote by joining the 13-date Retro Futura Tour later this summer alongside Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, Howard Jones, China Crisis and Katrina of Katrina & The Waves.

After years of touring under the English Beat banner, frontman Dave Wakeling now is turning his attention to recording brand-new music, launching a PledgeMusic campaign to help crowdfund a new record that would be the Beat’s first since 1982’s Special Beat Service.

Now that he’s out of rehab, Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen’s getting back to the business of being Al Jourgensen, and that means putting out a live album. getting the band back for a new tour and, last but not least, trying his hand at being a TV weatherman.

Like Mission of Burma, Scottish indie-pop faves The Vaselines are on their way to becoming more prolific post-reunion than in their original incarnation, this week announcing their second post-reunion album, and only their third overall, called V for Vaselines.

Robyn Hitchcock this August will release a brand-new, Joe Boyd-produced album titled The Man Upstairs that will be “part well-known favorites, part personal discoveries, and part originals,” according to Yep Roc Records. The first offering off the record is an acoustic take on the Psychedelic Furs’ classic “The Ghost in You.”