Sonic Youth will reissue two more early albums — 1985’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and 1987’s ‘Sister’ — on 180-gram audiophile vinyl in the coming weeks as they prep a French film soundtrack to be released as SYR9 in the Sonic Youth Recordings series and mix a new live album recorded in 1985.

With Alan Wilder and Vince Clarke on board, Depeche Mode fans are abuzz over the possibility that all five past and present members will appear on disc together for the first time on a new remix album reported to be in the works.

New Zealand alt-pop act The Chills will celebrate its 30th anniversary later this month with a concert at the site of the band’s Nov. 15, 1980, live debut — plus, the group plans to release a live album with two “rudimentary” recordings from that first concert.

The new album from Duran Duran — ‘All You Need is Now,’ which Nick Rhodes declares ‘the best record we’ve made in over two decades’ — will be released exclusively on iTunes on Dec. 21, but won’t come out on CD until February.

J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr will tone things down considerably next spring with the release of his first proper solo album, an acoustic — and apparently drum-free — collection called ‘Several Shades of Why.’

Former Siouxsie and the Banshees bassist Steven Severin says he and Robert Smith have discussed recording a second album as The Glove — the duo’s short-lived early-’80s side project — and that The Cure’s frontman tells him, ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

Mike Mills revealed the first details of R.E.M.’s 15th studio album, ‘Collapse Into Now,’ on Wednesday, telling Spin.com that the record features a ‘more expansive’ sound than 2008’s hard-rocking ‘Accelerate,’ thanks, in part, to guest appearances by the likes of Eddie Vedder, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye and Peaches.

Reunited college-rock favorites The Feelies ‘have completed recording basic tracks for a new album’
— the New Jersey combo’s first new record since 1991’s ‘Time for a Witness’ — that is slated to be released next spring on Bar/None Records.

The first new album in a decade-and-a-half from electro-industrial powerhouse Nitzer Ebb finally will be released on CD in the U.S. next month — albeit in expanded fashion, with a new song and a handful of mixes thrown in — as the band embarks on a fall tour of North and South America.

Jim Kerr reports that Simple Minds recently hit the studio to record tracks — including a ‘New Gold Dream’-era castoff — that are earmarked for both ‘an extensive compilation’ due out in early 2011 and what eventually will become the band’s 16th studio album.

With his 30th anniversary ‘Pleasure Principle’ U.S. tour now underway, synthpop figurehead Gary Numan this week released separate CD and DVD documents of his Dec. 3, 2009, London performance of that landmark 1980 solo debut and other assorted selections from his ample back catalog.

The surviving members of INXS finally have unveiled the tracklist and release dates for their long-in-the-works ‘Original Sin’ greatest-hits collection, featuring re-recordings of the band’s classics with new vocals by the likes of Ben Harper, Rob Thomas, Tricky and even occasional frontman J.D. Fortune.

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.