Nick Cave may be shelving his garage-blues side project Grinderman, but not before releasing a 12-track remix album called ‘Grinderman 2 RMX,’ collecting new and previously released mixes of cuts from the band’s sophomore album by members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, UNKLE and Queens of the Stone Age.

Lou Barlow has been treating fans to a treasure trove of free, rare and often unreleased music via his e-mail newsletter, and with his latest dispatch, he reaches back all the way back to 1983 to share a ‘lost’ 3-song practice tape from Deep Wound, his pre-Dinosaur Jr band with J Mascis.

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.