The ever-quirky Beck today revealed the fourth album to be covered — and the first foray into the ’80s — by his online project Record Club: the 1987 smash ‘Kick’ by INXS, which he’ll perform track-by-track with St. Vincent, Liars and Brazilian legends Os Mutantes.

Simply awful news out of New Orleans tonight, as word emerges that Alex Chilton of the peerless power-pop act Big Star has died of an apparent heart attack just days before he was scheduled to perform with the reconstituted band at the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists cover Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ in the debut of the A.V. Club’s new ‘Undercover’ series, which will feature bands covering tunes by The Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode, R.E.M. and more.

Drummer Martin Atkins — who manned the kit in Public Image Ltd., Ministry, Pigface and Killing Joke, among other groups — today posted this absolutely brilliant video in which he uses one of the replica film canisters that housed PiL’s ‘Metal Box’ to bake fudge brownies.

Despite proclaiming Swords a ‘meek disaster’ last December, Morrissey has gone ahead and made a music video to promote one of the (best) tracks off his late-2009 b-sides album: ‘Ganglord,’ the flip side to 2006’s ‘The Youngest Was the Most Loved.’

Holed up in a mobile recording trailer in EMI’s London parking lot, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke of Erasure this week began offering fans short glimpses into the recording of their 14th studio album, posting a pair of videos in which they discuss their writing sessions — and Clarke’s plans to only use analog synths on the record.