You can’t say they’re not persistent: Organizers of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival apparently continue to make offers to land a reunion of The Smiths to headline the annual festival, with Morrissey reporting this week that he has yet again turned down an offer to have the defunct indie giants top the 2013 bill.

The auction of 250 autographed copies of The Replacements’ much-buzzed Songs for Slim benefit/reunion EP — billed as the first new release from the ‘Mats since 1990’s All Shook Down — kicks off Tuesday morning and will run for 10 days, after which the EP’s five tracks will be commercially released as digital downloads.

The Specials finally are making good on a promise to tour the U.S., today announcing they’ll play two dates at the South By Southwest festival in March as part of the first leg of a larger North American visit — but the shows will not feature co-vocalist Neville Staple, who is leaving the band due to “ill health.”

Pigbag, the short-lived U.K. funk-infused post-punk act best known for its jam “Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag,” returns this March with ‘Year of the Pigbag,’ the first new record in three decades from the newly reformulated act. Check out the horn-fueled track “Disco Mama” from the comeback album.

The final tracklist for the The Replacements’ upcoming ‘Songs for Slim’ EP — featuring four songs recorded by Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, plus a fifth by Chris Mars — was unveiled tonight on the project’s Facebook page amid reports that an auction for the 250 limited-edition singles could start next week.

The Replacements — namely Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson — this evening teased Songs For Slim, their much-anticipated reunion project, announced last year as four-song, ultra-limited, vinyl-only covers EP that was to be auctioned off to raise money to help pay for the medical expenses of former bandmate Slim Dunlap.

The Breeders are gearing up for a big 2013 as the ‘Last Splash’-era lineup reunites to tour that album, and to get fans into an appropriately festive mood, the band posted iPhone-filmed video last night of a rehearsal in Kim Deal’s basement of the song “New Year.” Deal also has launched a 7-inch single series.

The Godfathers announced this weekend that they will release the long-in-the-works ‘Jukebox Fury’ — the reunited rockers’ first new album in 18 years — in late February or early March to coincide with the band’s upcoming support slot on a month-long, 22-date U.K. tour with The Stranglers.

The brand-new album from The House of Love will be titled ‘She Paints Words in Red’ and is expected to be released in March or April on Cherry Red Records, according to an announcement today on the band’s Facebook page that also revealed the cover art for the group’s second post-reunion effort.

Paul McCartney closed out Wednesday night’s marathon 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief and had a few special guests up his sleeve: the surviving members of Nirvana, who reunited to back McCartney not on one of Kurt Cobain’s songs or a Beatles classic, but, rather, a sludgy new rocker called “Cut Me Some Slack.”

Reunited synthpop favorites OMD have yet to announce a release date for their upcoming 12th album English Electric, but the group has gone ahead and unveiled a 13-date U.K. tour in support of the album that’s slated to run from late April into mid-May — with European dates expected to be announced shortly.

The ‘Last Splash’-era lineup of The Breeders — Kim Deal, Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs, and Jim Macpherson — has reunited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that album and its breakout hit “Cannonball,” and will reissue the record in a deluxe edition and then perform it live on tour in the U.S. and Europe in 2013.

Reunited Creation Records standout The House of Love will follow up the just-released 3CD reissue of its classic 1988 debut album with a true surprise: a brand-new studio album that is being delivered this week “fully mastered and mixed,” according to the band’s official Facebook page.