The Dream Syndicate has been taking this reunion thing a little slowly, only having played one U.S. date since getting back together last fall — an appearance last month at Wilco’s Solid Sound festival in North Adams, Mass. That’s going to change this fall, though, at least for fans in Chicago.

The reconfigured Big Country — with The Alarm’s Mike Peters filling in for late frontman Stuart Adamson — already has been on tour in the U.S. and Canada since early June, and has now extended that summer-long North American trek with dates that run through the month of August.

Following the announcement this week that The Mission will release its new studio album The Brightest Light this September, the band today has shared a streaming sampler to let fans get short tastes of the album’s 11 songs. The new album is due out Sept. 17 in North America.

Steven Severin these days devotes himself to making new music for old movies, composing and performing scores for decades-old silent films. Now, though, he’s providing the score to “Borley Rectory,” an animated documentary about the “most famous haunted house in England.”

Optic Nerve Recordings is celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Monochrome Set’s early compilation Volume, Contrast, Brilliance… Singles & Sessions Vol. 1 with a new, ultra-limited vinyl pressing of the collection of various radio sessions and Rough Trade singles and B-sides recorded between 1979 and 1981.

Johnny Marr today debuted the video for the latest single off his new solo album The Messenger, a moody, black-and-white clip for “New Town Velocity” that features a lot of walking, both backwards and forwards. You can check out the video below via ShortList.com, where it premiered earlier today.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour featured new music from Paul Westerberg, Dinosaur Jr and The Chills, plus old faves by XTC, Simple Minds, The Selecter, Oingo Boingo, Concrete Blonde, Soft Cell, Lowlife, Mighty Lemon Drops, Lloyd Cole, Mojo Nixon and more.

Simple Minds this week announced its first North American tour in 11 years, a surprisingly short 7-date trek that has left fans who don’t live in Los Angeles or the Northeast severely disappointed. Frontman Jim Kerr, though, says the band is testing the waters for a larger tour.

Singer Chris Connelly and bassist/programmer Paul Barker — who played together in Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pigface and various other Wax Trax! Records industrial-rock supergroups in the late ’80s and early ’90s — are writing and recording new music together as Bells Into Machines.

With Adam Ant’s massive 43-date North American tour set to open tonight in San Diego, the New Wave icon stopped by “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” last night to play “Vince Taylor”— off his first album in 18 years — on the air, and then threw in a performance of “Goody Two Shoes” as a web-only exclusive.

David Bowie tonight debuted the music video for the fourth single off his surprise comeback album The Next Day, and, this time, instead of enlisting high-grade acting talent like Tilda Swinton, Gary Goldman or Marion Cotillard, the Thin White Duke has opted to go it alone.

The Violent Femmes have only played a handful of shows since reuniting this past April, but the band’s already experienced a major lineup shake-up: Drummer Victor DeLorenzo — who promised the band’s Coachella reunion would be a “monstrous thing of beauty” — is out, replaced by Brian Vigilone of The Dresden Dolls.

Simple Minds’ first North American tour in more than a decade will feature just seven dates this October, with new concerts announced today in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Boston, Montreal and Toronto joining previously revealed shows in New York City and Red Bank, N.J.