Peter Murphy and the Burning Shed label are honoring late Japan and Dalis Car bassist Mick Karn on what would have been his 55th birthday Wednesday with a “Download Day,” urging fans to buy Karn’s music in tribute to musician and to show that there is demand for it as a way of keeping his CDs in print.

New Model Army returns this fall with its 12th studio album and first in four years, a 14-track set dubbed Between Dog and Wolf on which the band debuts its new bassist and of which bandleader Justin Sullivan declares, “Sonically, this is the best album we’ve ever made, whilst creatively it has opened lots of new doors.”

The House of Love will follow up this year’s brand-new studio album She Paints Words In Red with a live CD/DVD package that will be recorded at a pair of special concerts at a 200-seat club in London this November and released on Cherry Red Records next year, the reunited band recently announced.

The unlikely pairing of Elvis Costello and The Roots this week debuted the first fruit of their new collaboration, premiering on Pitchfork the single and lyric video for “Walk Us Uptown,” the first single off the forthcoming Wise Up Ghost. The album is due out Sept. 17 on Blue Note Records.

Just days after manager Gary Morris told Australian media that Midnight Oil had been offered up to $200,000 per show to reunite and tour the U.S., the band has issued a statement saying it had no current plans to reform in the wake of Peter Garrett’s newfound unemployment, and that Morris was resigning his position.

Fans of reclusive songwriting genius Paddy McAloon spent a good part of last month debating the authenticity of a 10-song album called The Devil Came A Calling that mysteriously appeared online June 10, but now the verdict’s in: It is, indeed, a new Prefab Sprout album and it’s due out this fall.

Kitchens of Distinction will release its first new studio album in 19 years — the band ‘s fifth overall and first since 1994′s Cowboys and Aliens — on Sept. 30, and the band’s label this morning debuted the first taste of the new KOD music in the form of a 30-second snippet of an instrumental version of the album’s opening track.