Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo returns this October with a new band — Lee Ranaldo & The Dust, featuring SY drummer Steve Shelley, plus guitarist Alan Licht and bassist Tim Lüntzel — and a new album, the 10-track Last Night on Earth, which will be released Oct. 8 by Matador Records, the label announced this week.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured brand-new music from Jane’s Addiction, Kitchens of Distinction, Ministry, The Mission, Gary Numan and Johnny Marr, plus old timey stuff from XTC, Black Flag, Meat Puppets, Wire, The Sisters of Mercy, The Jesus and Mary Chain and more.

As we first reported back in February, legendary industrial label Wax Trax! Records is the subject of an upcoming documentary that promises to chronicle the “rise and fall” of the record store turned label via artist and employee interviews, home video clips and never-before-seen footage from the Wax Trax! vault.

Drummer Jon Brookes, who co-founded Madchester survivors The Charlatans in 1989, “passed away peacefully” this morning at age 44, nearly three years after collapsing onstage in Philadelphia from a seizure stemming from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor, the band announced “with great sadness” today.

The 3CD/1DVD box set commemorating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s third and final album In Utero that was announced last month will include a brand-new mix of the album, a host of B-sides, compilation cuts, alternate mixes and early demos — plus a previously unheard instrumental.

It’s not quite as satisfying as watching him school an interviewer on how to play “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” but bassist Peter Hook has just posted a new video in which he demonstrates how to play “Ceremony,” the song that morphed from one of Joy Division’s last compositions to New Order’s first single.

Each year from 1988 to 2011, R.E.M. mailed a special holiday single to every dues-paying member of its fan club, a total of 24 singles that featured Christmas songs, covers, live tracks and originals, spread across 7-inch vinyl for the first 10 years, then alternating between CDs, DVDs, vinyl and VHS.