Last week came news that classic college-rock combo Camper Van Beethoven is set to return early next year its first album in more than eight years, and now we’ve got our first taste of ‘La Costa Perdida’ in the form of the song “Northern California Girls,” which premiered this week at Billboard.com.

Paul Weller will close out 2012 by releasing a new six-track EP built around “Dragonfly,” a standout on this year’s ‘Sonik Kicks’ album, that will be released digitally and as a limited-edition 12-inch single with five additional songs that have been released already this year as B-sides or bonus tracks.

Concrete Blonde — featuring the longtime core of singer/bassist Johnette Napolitano and guitarist James Mankey — will embark on a nine-date, pre-Christmas U.S. tour next month, and may stage a New Year’s Eve concert in Los Angeles, according to its publicist.

German industrial powerhouse KMFDM are set to release their 18th studio album — ‘Kunst,’ featuring Pussy Riot-inspired cover art by long-running associate Aidan “Brute!” Hughes — early next year, and will follow that almost immediately with a U.S. tour in March that, so far, includes 18 dates across the country.

Last night’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured new and previously unreleased music from The Dead Milkmen, Dinosaur Jr and The House of Love, plus favorites from Kate Bush, Primal Scream, New Order, Johnny Marr, The Specials, Echo & The Bunnymen and more.

It was shocking enough when the long-delayed reissues of My Bloody Valentine’s two studio albums finally were released earlier this year, but now frontman Kevin Shields claims he’ll release the 21-year-in-the-making follow-up to ‘Loveless’ by the end of the year — and will follow that up with an EP of even newer music.

For a generation raised by MTV — particularly in the late ’80s and early ’90s — they were ubiquitous: those 30-second “Rock the Vote” promos featuring stars ranging from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe to Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Madonna imploring viewers to register to vote and cast their ballots.

Cherry Red Records today offered up a third previously unreleased demo off its upcoming 3CD expanded reissue of the self-titled 1988 debut from The House of Love — this time frontman Guy Chadwick’s original demo of “Shine On,” the band’s first single. Check it out here.

Just in time for Election Day, nerd-pop duo They Might Be Giants have dusted off a song they originally recorded during the 2008 presidential campaign called “Vote Or Don’t,” and have produced a new music video for the track, which you can see here, and are offering it as a free MP3 download.

Later this month, Dinosaur Jr will release a limited-edition live album called ‘Chocomel Daze’ that recorded in 1987 and will be available only on vinyl or as a digital download — and our friends at Merge Recrods have set us up with a copy of the deluxe 150-gram vinyl LP to give away to one lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs reader.

Just a day after wrapping up an extensive fall tour of the U.S. that included a string of dates with The Lemonheads, The Psychedelic Furs today unveiled a short run of West Coast dates that include a New Year’s Eve show in Anaheim, Calif., and a New Year’s Day concert in Las Vegas.

Sure, we’re already five days into November, but better late than never with this month’s installment in our ongoing series of Auto Reverse mixtapes — two 45-minute slabs of music to help get you where you gotta go. Below, you can stream or download the two sides, brimming with new music and some great vintage tracks.

Karl Wallinger will bring World Party back to the U.S. for the third time this year — following a string of in-stores and radio performances this past spring and a handful of dates in the eastern U.S. in September — to perform a short run of eight concerts along the West Coast and in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.