Next week sees the release of the latest installment in R.E.M.’s ongoing reissue series: an expanded 2CD, 25th anniversary re-release of ‘Lifes Rich Pageant.’ Thanks to an exclusive pre-release stream at Spin.com, you can go ahead and check out the fully remastered 1986 album and the 19-track bonus disc.

Robert Smith’s new recording of the ‘Small Hours’ appears on ‘Johnny Boy Would Love This… A Tribute to John Martyn,’ which is due out Aug. 16. Lauren Laverne debuted the song on BBC 6 Music today, and you can stream and/or download the radio rip thanks to ever-vigilant fan site Chain of Flowers.

Last March while in Austin, Texas, for the South By Southwest music festival, former Orange Juice frontman Edwyn Collins popped into Big Orange Recording to knock out a five-song live session for Daytrotter — which was posted Monday and is available as a free download.

San Francisco noise-rock act Railcars this summer will release a cover of the classic first side of Kate Bush’s 1985 album ‘Hounds of Love’ on limited-edition cassette and one-sided vinyl formats — and you can hear three of the genre-bending tracks here.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark will release a 20-track live album and hardback book called ‘History of Modern Tour: Live in Berlin’ this August to commemorate the group’s rapturously received comeback last year. Stream one of the tracks here.

Morrissey debuted three new songs — ‘Action Is My Middle Name,’ ‘The Kid’s A Looker’ and ‘People Are The Same Everywhere’ — in a live session recorded last week and broadcast tonight on Janice Long’s late-night show on BBC Radio 2. Hear all three here.

Gary Numan is set to release a new album called ‘Dead Son Rising’ this September that will feature ‘a mixture of new songs, instrumental tracks and specially commissioned remixes’ that he will sell exclusively through his website and on a just-announced seven-date U.K. tour.

Fans of Echo & The Bunnymen can commemorate the band’s recent gigs performing their first two albums — 1980’s ‘Crocodiles’ and 1981’s ‘Heaven Up Here’ — back-to-back with a brand-new live CD called ‘Do It Clean.’

As a ‘thank you’ to fans who’ve put up with the band’s recent spate of tour cancellations, Duran Duran over the weekend posted a free download of its nine-song concert for contest winners at RDS Radio in Rome, Italy, on May 12.

Back in March, we brought you a teaser of ‘Take Forever’ by The Japanese Popstars featuring Robert Smith of The Cure on lead vocals — and today, with the single finally released in the U.K., the Northern Ireland dance act has made the track available for all to hear.

The folks at Nettwerk Music have done a good job these past few months teasing Peter Murphy’s upcoming album ‘Ninth,’ and now that its release is imminent — the record arrives Tuesday — the label is streaming the full 11-track album.

Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr is following up his performance on Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-nominated score for ‘Inception’ with his own debut as a film composer, having scored the new straight-to-video Antonio Banderas thriller ‘The Big Bang.’

For two months, Depeche Mode has been teasing ‘Remixes 2: 81-11’ with a series of pre-release streams of mixes from the set, but they’ve avoided releasing the two most buzzed-about tracks — new mixes by former band members Vince Clarke and Alan Wilder. Now they’ve leaked.