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.