Crooner Bryan Ferry enlisted a star-studded cast — including Roxy Music bandmates Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay — for this fall’s ‘Olympia,’ his first album of new material in eight years and his first recorded collaboration with those ex-bandmates since 1973’s ‘For Your Pleasure.’

The members of R.E.M. today marked the release of the 25th anniversary edition of ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ by looking to their future, announcing they’ve ‘just completed recording their next record in Berlin.’

Short-lived British postpunk act The Pop Group — which somehow melded punk, dub, noise and funk — will reunite this September after nearly 30 years apart, with four concerts scheduled in the U.K. and Italy and a new album reportedly in the works.

Reactivated U.K. post-punk greats Wire — who are eying a January release for their as-yet-unnamed 12th album — have announced the launch of their ‘Legal Bootleg Series,’ a download-only concert series that kicks off with choice gigs recorded in 1978, 1988 and 2000.

With its year-long farewell tour underway, Norwegian pop trio a-ha this week announced it will release ’25’ — a new 2CD retrospective covering its output over the past quarter century — in its home country later this month.

The Houston, Texas-based Catastrophic Theatre is working with Pixies frontman Black Francis to adapt his 2007 solo album ‘Bluefinger’ — a concept record about the life and death of Dutch rocker and painter Herman Brood — into a rock opera set to debut this fall.

Word emerged this spring — via bandleader Colin Meloy’s Twitter feed — that R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck would be contributing to The Decemberists’ upcoming sixth album — and we’ve now got photographic evidence, thanks to a series of snapshots posted on R.E.M.’s official site today.

Husband-and-wife team/former Talking Heads rhythm section Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth this week announced they’ll take the Tom Tom Club out on the road for the group’s first ‘lengthy’ North American tour in 10 years this fall in support of the forthcoming album ‘Genius of Live.’

Reunited British synthpop unit Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark this week unveiled the tracklist, announced details of a Peter Saville-designed box set and set a September release date for ‘History of Modern,’ the band’s first new album in 14 years.

The bat-like Peter Murphy — who hits the big screen next week with a cameo as a vampire in ‘The Twilight Saga: Eclipse’ — today announced he’ll release his ninth solo album, the fittingly titled ‘Ninth,’ in the fall, following this summer’s Dirty Dirt Tour.

Lloyd Cole will release ‘Broken Record’ — the former Commotions leader’s first full-band album in a decade — this September, and says he’s ‘happy we got these songs finished because I’m not sure I’ll make another record like this again.’

Squeeze co-leader Chris Difford is in the midst of releasing his third solo album, ‘Cashmere If You Can,’ piece-by-piece each week through the Saturday Morning Music Club, which delivers multimedia bundles to subscribers’ desktop apps each Saturday.

That concert in Atlanta featuring ex-frontman Dean Wareham ‘performing the Galaxie 500 songbook’ that we told you about last month won’t be a one-off after all: Wareham and his Dean & Britta bandmates have announced a scattered string of such shows between August and December.