Three months after announcing plans to go into “one-man Clash mode” on tour this fall, Billy Bragg this morning released the first of several new songs inspired by the current political tumult, a track called “The Sleep of Reason” that addresses nationalism in the U.S. and Europe. Here the full song here.

For this week’s installment of Vintage Video, we present what is believed to be the earliest pro-shot video footage of R.E.M. in concert: a 50-minute live set filmed on Oct. 10, 1982, for broadcast on TV by a South Carolina station about six months before the release of the band’s debut, Murmur. Watch it here.

Gary Numan today officially announced the release of his first new album in four years, the 10-track Savage (Songs From a Broken World), which will be released Sept. 15, and is preceded by the debut of first single “My Name is Ruin” — which you can stream in its entirety right here.

Ministry has released a new live album on Bandcamp — with a vinyl edition following in September — that, while not advertised as such, is taken from the same 1990 concert that spawned the six-song In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up live album and companion home video release.

In a bit of holiday synchronicity, former Galaxie 500 frontman Dean Wareham today shared video of himself and some fellow musicians performing his old band’s melancholy 1990 song “Fourth of July” on the Fourth of July itself (“4th of July on 4th of July,” he wrote). Watch the performance, and the original video, here.

For the past few days, Elvis Costello’s Twitter account has been teasing some sort of mystery release that’s due out on the Fourth of July, initially available in a now-sold-out 10-inch 45 rpm single, but which also will be available digitally starting tomorrow. Not much else is yet known about the release.

New Romantic stars Spandau Ballet — who reunited in 2009 after nearly two decades — have parted ways with frontman Tony Hadley, who this morning announced in a cryptic statement that, “due to circumstances beyond my control,” he was “required to state” he is no longer part of the group.