Following last year’s reunion album from The dB’s, one of that band’s founders, Chris Stamey, will return early next year with ‘Lovesick Blues,’ his first album since a 2005 collaboration with Yo La Tengo called ‘A Question of Temperature.’ Stamey is previewing the new record with a free download of the track “Astronomy.”

The Cult recently enlisted witch house act Salem to remix the track “Elemental Light” off the band’s current album Choice of Weapon, and has just released a Kostas Seremetis-directed video for the new version — which, as you can hear from the beat-driven clip posted above, is pretty much and entirely different song than the original.

Pylon Records next week will release an expanded reissue of the debut mini-LP ‘Eureka’ on vinyl and, for the first time ever, CD from late-’80s Los Angeles post-punk trio Abecedarians, the only American band to have released a single — 1985’s “Smiling Monarchs” — on Manchester’s legendary Factory Records.

Peter Hook recently recorded a 2-minute video for the NME’s Song Stories series in which he discusses the origins of some of Joy Division’s most beloved songs, including “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Transmission” and “Atmosphere” — plus the future New Order classic, “Ceremony,” that Joy Division didn’t record.

As we reported last week, reunited indie-pop outfit The Ocean Blue is previewing its first new album in 13 years — due out Jan. 15 — by including two of the record’s tracks on a new compilation from Korda Records, the new label launched by the band’s David Schelzel and three fellow musicians.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured new music from Jane’s Addiction, Nitzer Ebb’s Douglas J. McCarthy and Wendy James of Transvision Vamp, plus old favorites from World Party, Oingo Boingo, Split Enz, Heaven 17, The Toy Dolls and The Cure.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds today announced they will release their 15th studio album next February, a nine-track collection titled ‘Push the Sky Away’ that Cave, on the band’s website, says has a sound and feel that “just seems new, you know, but new in an old school kind of way.”

As we near the end of the year, the good folks at Astralwerks are hooking us up with a Pet Shop Boys prize pack — new album ‘Elysium’ on vinyl, plus the “Leaving” single in every format — to give away to one lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs reader, plus a couple bonus items: new albums from Kylie Minogue and Diamond Rings.

The long wait is nearly over for fans of the Throwing Muses, as frontwoman Kristin Hersh this morning announced via Twitter the completion of the band’s long-in-the-works ninth album, which, upon its expected release sometime next year, will mark the Muses’ first new record in a decade.

The Church next year will release a live DVD capturing the band’s performance of three full albums — 1988′s ‘Starfish,’ 1992′s ‘Priest=Aura’ and 2009’s ‘Untitled #23’ — last December in Sydney, and is previewing the upcoming release by streaming each of the sets via Moshcam.com.

Dinosaur Jr frontman/guitar butcher J Mascis isn’t known as the most talkative man in rock, so it’s a rare treat to see he’s guesting on today’s episode of “WTF,” the Marc Maron-hosted podcast that has nicely expanded from its comedians-talking-about-comedy roots to include the occasional musical guest.

This week’s new releases include reissue of albums from The House of Love, The Blow Monkeys, Josef K and Marc and the Mambas, plus new music from Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, Douglas J. McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb, Bryan Ferry and the surviving members of Throbbing Gristle.

Cherry Red Records next spring will release a 4CD box called ‘Scared To Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980-1989’ that the U.K. label says is inspired by the Lenny Kaye’s classic ‘Nuggets’ garage-rock compilation and is “devoted to the 1980s indie guitar-pop revolution which swept across the British Isles.”