The Feelies have recorded their first new album in 20 years, a 13-track collection called ‘Here Before’ that’s due out April 12 on Bar/None Records — and is preceded by the track ‘Should Be Gone,’ the band’s first new recording since 1991’s ‘Time for a Witness.’

With Dinosaur Jr on break, bassist Lou Barlow is shifting focus to a revived Sebadoh, with plans to release expanded reissues of 1994’s ‘Bakesale’ and 1996’s ‘Harmacy’ this year and take the famously lo-fi act out on the road for the ‘Bakesale/Harmacy Remembering Time Tour.’

After nearly 30 years as a bandleader — first fronting Camper Van Beethoven, then Cracker, and, more recently, both — David Lowery next month will release his first-ever solo album, ‘The Palace Guards,’ billed as a ‘batch of songs that didn’t quite fit the vibe of Cracker or Camper Van Beethoven.’

Chicago indie-guitar heroes Eleventh Dream Day return this spring with their 10th studio album, ‘Riot Now!,’ which the band’s label, Thrill Jockey Records, is hailing as “a call back to the urgency of 1988’s ‘Prairie School Freakout.'”

Mike Watt will release his third punk opera in March — the 30-track, Minutemen-inspired ‘Hyphenated-Man’ — and then embark on a massive North American tour in which he and his band The Missingmen will play the album ’51 times in 52 days.’

Fans of The Smiths are reveling in an unexpected Christmas gift this week with the appearance of a bootleg LP featuring 16 unreleased studio outtakes, including the scrapped original recording of ‘Sheila Take a Bow,’ a reggae-like take on ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ and two previously unheard instrumentals.

As we reported earlier this month, Sonic Youth is preparing to release its soundtrack to the French film ‘Simon Werner a Disparu’ (aka ‘Lights Out’) as SYR9 in the long-running Sonic Youth Recordings series — and today the band revealed the release date, tracklist and cover art for the project.

R.E.M. employed a decidedly old-school medium to announce the full tracklist of its new album ‘Collapse Into Now’: The band revealed the titles of the record’s 12 songs via its snail-mail fanclub newsletter.

Primal Scream will celebrate the 20th anniversary of ‘Screamadelica’ next year with a lavish 4CD/1DVD/2LP box set highlighted by ‘a new cut of the album’ made with occasional collaborator Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.

The ‘Omnibus Edition’ of The Fall’s ‘This Nation’s Saving Grace’ that first was announced in the summer of 2009 finally will arrive in late January, packed with 31 singles, alternative edits, John Peel sessions and previously unreleased ‘working mixes.’

J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr will tone things down considerably next spring with the release of his first proper solo album, an acoustic — and apparently drum-free — collection called ‘Several Shades of Why.’

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.

U2 is set to release a new limited-edition, vinyl-only live EP next month called ‘Wide Awake in Europe’ — adapting the title and cover concept from 1985’s ‘Wide Awake in America’ — that will feature the debut of fan-favorite track ‘Mercy.’