Beggars Archive will release an expanded 2CD reissue of The Charlatans’ 1990 debut “Some Friendly” — although not the larger “Omnibus” set originally planned — to coincide with the band’s 20th anniversary performance of the full album in London and Barcelona this May.

The Pixies have licensed “Isla de Encanta,” off the band’s 1987 debut EP ‘Come On Pilgrim,’ to Visa for a (admittedly quite clever) World Cup-themed TV commercial called “Football Evolution.”

Universal Music Group is scrapping its Siouxsie and the Banshees reissue program midstream, meaning the band’s’ final four albums — 1987’s Through the Looking Glass 1988’s Peepshow, 1991’s Superstition and 1995’s The Rapture — will not receive expanded re-releases as originally planned, ex-bassist Steven Severin reports.

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore today took to his new blog — Flowers & Cream, which he quietly launched earlier this month — to announce a pair of intriguing musical projects: a new solo album and book, plus a “trio” record with wife/bandmate Kim Gordon and Yoko Ono.

The Pet Shop Boys not only released their new Pandemonium live CD/DVD package in the UK this week — just two months after it was filmed in London — but the duo also announced the concert film’s namesake tour will play a five-date encore in England this summer.

Alan Wilder shocked Depeche Mode fans around the world tonight, joining the band onstage for the first time since 1994 to accompany Martin Gore on piano during a performance of “Somebody” during a Teenage Cancer Trust charity concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Molly Ringwald tells Vanity Fair that the late John Hughes started work on a script based on The Cure’s 1983 single “The Lovecats” — and even assembled a hypothetical soundtrack for the film — after finishing “The Breakfast Club.”

Primal Scream will perform its 1991 classic Screamadelica— the album that saw the band shed its C86 indie-pop sound in favor of house-influenced, druggy dance-rock — in its entirety for the first time ever Nov. 27 at London’s Olympia.

Black Francis has released his long-in-the-works project The Golem, a 4CD/1DVD set and 50-page book chronicling the score to the silent 1920 German expressionist film “Der Golem” that the Pixies frontman wrote for the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2008.

It’s not out until next month, but — thanks to Stereogum — you can now hear Robert Smith of The Cure covering “Very Good Advice” from Disney’s original “Alice in Wonderland,” which the iconic frontman has recorded for Tim Burton’s new live-action take on the Lewis Carroll classic.

U2 this morning announced a “final” concert on this summer’s second North American leg of its massive 360° Tour: June 3 in Salt Lake City, a date that now becomes the opening night of the Bono and Co.’s 2010 return to the U.S.

The Daily Swarm, citing “multiple industry sources,” tonight reports Soundgarden — reforming after 12 years apart — will headline this summer’s Lollapalooza alongside Green Day and Lady Gaga.

The Pet Shop Boys today released ‘Pandemonium’ — a live CD/DVD concert film recorded Dec. 21 at London’s O2 Arena at the final show of the duo’s 2009 world tour — in the UK, with a U.S. release to follow on March 23. To promote the new set, PSB this morning posted this HD trailer for the concert film.