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.