Throwing Muses played a handful of U.S. dates earlier this year, and while the band was in Seattle, Kristin Hersh and Co. stopped by KEXP for an on-air session during which they performed four tracks off last year’s sprawling double album Purgatory/Paradise, and discussed the comeback record.

Tonight’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured new music from Bob Mould, The Afghan Whigs, Echo & The Bunnymen, Chrissie Hynde and the Pixies, plus old favorites from The B-52s, Talking Heads, Big Country, Peter Murphy, New Order, Johnny Thunders and more.

Originally due out last October, “Barbed Wire Kisses” — a 272-page biography of The Jesus and Mary Chain by music journalist and author Zoë Howe — is now set to be published in the U.S. and U.K. on May 19, but the paperback will be available a full month early, on Record Store Day, in the U.K.

Bob Mould this morning treated fans to the first taste of his upcoming 11th solo album Beauty & Ruin, dropping the 2-minute “pure adrenalin shot” that is “Hey Mr. Grey,” which is meant to introduce fans to the forthcoming record, described by his label Merge as a “compact epic,”

Upset by “ever more negative interpretations” of the interview he conducted last weekend, Robert Smith took to The Cure’s website today to explain his plans to finally release the remainder of the music recorded for 2008’s 4:13 Dream, revealing that it will be issued across two different albums.

New Order, which began making noise about recording new music not long into its current reunion, finally treated fans to some of that work this past weekend during the band’s slot at Lollapalooza Chile, debuting a new 6-minute number that bears the working title of “Drop the Guitar,”

The classic third album from Matthew Sweet — 1991’s Girlfriend, featuring the twin guitar attack of Robert Quine and Television’s Richard Lloyd — will be reissued on 180-gram vinyl this fall by Plain Recordings in what’s being billed as the record’s first time back on 12-inch since its initial release.