One-man electropop outfit Cassettes Won’t Listen — aka Brooklyn’s Jason Drake, who last fall released his own version of Duran Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’ and has remade songs by The Cure and INXS — returns with another cover of an ’80s alt classic: the Pixies’ ‘Hey.’ Stream it here.

The full-album tribute is becoming de rigueur for British music magazines, and the latest to receive the treatment is New Order’s 1983 classic ‘Power, Corruption & Lies.’ The new issue of Mojo features the newly reunited, Peter Hook-less band on the cover, plus a CD featuring a track-by-track cover of the album and its accompanying singles and B-sides.

For the second straight year, The Ocean Blue has posted a free Christmas single, once again pairing the band’s David Schelzel with Don Peris of The Innocence Mission. This year, the pair recorded a cover of ‘Walking on Air,’ from the 1982 animated adaptation of the children’s book ‘The Snowman.’

Having left The Cribs and reunited his early-2000s band The Healers, ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr today offers up a free holiday track recorded with his bandmates: the 3-minute-and-40-second instrumental ‘Free Christmas,’ which can be streamed and/or downloaded here.

R.E.M. this week sent fan-club members the band’s final holiday single, capping a nearly 25-year-old tradition with a 2-track CD featuring live renditions of ‘Perfect Circle’ and ‘Life and How To Live It,’ the latter of which was recorded at the band’s last-ever concert in Mexico City in November 2008.

The Submarines next week will release ‘The Shoelaces EP,’ a six-track collection featuring covers of songs by a pair of the band’s influences: The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey,’ already released as a bonus track on 2011’s ‘Love Notes/Letter Bombs,’ and New Order’s ‘Your Silent Face.’

Sinead O’Connor today announced she will release ‘How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?’ — her ninth studio album and first in five years — in February, and has offered fans a taste by streaming two of the record’s tracks in advance of the release.

Gary Numan released his latest album, Dead Son Rising, via his website back in September, but it’s just getting a physical release in the U.S. this week — and to promote it, our friends at Consequence of Sound are streaming the full record, which you can hear right here.

Dead Can Dance today released the second in a series of free, four-track digital EPs collecting live material recorded on the band’s 2005 tour. ‘Live Happenings — Part II’ features in-concert recordings of ‘The Love That Cannot Be,’ ‘The Lotus Eaters,’ ‘Crescent’ and ‘Minus Sanctus.’ Get it here.

There’s still a couple weeks before the new 20-track ‘Please, Please, Please: A Tribute to the Smiths’ drops, but American Laundromat Records is offering a sneak peak via streaming versions of three of the Smiths covers that will appear on the disc: Telekinesis’ ‘Sheila Take a Bow,’ Kitten’s ‘Panic’ and Sara Lov’s ‘Well I Wonder.’

Today sees the debut of the musical reunion of former Depeche Mode bandmates Vince Clarke and Martin L. Gore in the form of ‘Spock,’ the first single off the newly christened VCMG’s as-yet-to-be-titled album, due out next year. Check out streams of the original mix and two remixes.

The newly reunited Dead Can Dance are offering fans a free download of a four-track digital EP entitled ‘Live Happenings — Part 1’ to help tide them over in anticipation of the group’s 2012 reunion album and world tour, which is slated to begin in July and encompass North and South America, Europe, Australia and the Far East.

Pioneering synthpop outfit Heaven 17 is treating fans to a free digital EP featuring a new acoustic recording of its 1982 hit ‘Let Me Go,’ plus live recordings of ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”‘and ‘Penthouse & Pavement.’ The ‘Rarities 2011’ EP is available as a free download in exchange for an e-mail address.