Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck seemingly have been joined at the musical hip since McCaughey started his tenure as a R.E.M. sideman in the mid-’90s.

Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan has contributed a cover of The Gun Club’s “Mother of Earth” for the fourth installment of The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project.

The surviving members of The Smithereens took to the stage in Red Bank, N.J., last night to pay tribute to their fallen bandleader, Pat DiNizio — performing a marathon set that found the band’s members joined by special guests Steven Van Zandt, Dave Davies of The Kinks, Marshal Crenshaw, Ted Leo, and more.

Little Steven Van Zandt is hosting a concert tonight in New Jersey to pay tribute to the late Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens, a show that will be streamed live online and will feature DiNizio’s surviving bandmates fronted by Van Zandt, as well as Patty Smyth and Scandal. Full details on tonight’s show right here.

The Oakland, Calif.-based label Sell the Heart Records has just released a two-part, 21-song collection of Fugazi covers by California indie acts including No Knife, Warsaw, Great Apes, theSTART, Long Knifes, Identical Homes, My Last Line and more. Stream the whole thing here.

The Factory Theatre in suburban Sydney, Australia, on Saturday hosted a 25th anniversary tribute to The Cure’s ninth album Wish that was headlined by Steve Kilbey of The Church, and featured a number of Sydney-area musicians performing songs off that record and Robert Smith and Co.’s back catalog.

More than a dozen musical acts contributed to a new tribute to post-punk electronic-music pioneer Fad Gadget “made by fans, for fans” that’s available as a free download in tribute to “an underappreciated yet profound trailblazing musical legacy.” Stream the album here or download it for free.

The John Darnielle-led Mountain Goats this week announced their 16th studio album, a guitar-less record called Goths that, as its title suggests, celebrates the dark musical genre: “the friends whose bands never made it out of Fender’s Ballroom, the Gene Loves Jezebels of the world.”

A long-in-the-works Paul McCartney tribute album finally arrives this November, and the first track to debut from The Art of McCartney is a rather faithful cover of The Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” performed by The Cure with Sir Paul’s son James McCartney assisting on keyboards.

Last night at the venerable 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga., Drivin’ N Cryin’ paid tribute to late guitarist Buren Fowler, who played with that band from 1988 to 1993 after working as Peter Buck’s guitar tech and an occasional second guitarist on two R.E.M. tours.

American Laundromat Records next spring will release a double-CD tribute to quirky director Wes Anderson titled I Saved Latin!, a collection that will feature indie artists such as Black Francis, Kristin Hersh, Juliana Hatfield, Mike Watt and more covering songs featured in films.

Hunters & Collectors — best-known to American fans for late-’80s modern-rock hits “Back on the Breadline” and “When the River Runs Dry” — will be the subject of a new tribute album next month featuring interpretations of the band’s music by Eddie Vedder and Neil Finn, Paul Kelly, The Living End, The Avalanches and more.

New Pornographers’ A.C. Newman, Ted Leo, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, Doug Gillard of Guided By Voices and Nada Surf, The Wrens’ Charles Bissell and more are slated to perform in New York City later this month as part of a tribute to Scott Miller of ’80s college-rock act Game Theory and later, who died in April.