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.

Now that we’re knee-deep in August, seems as good a time as any to dump the new installment of the Auto Reverse mixtape series on you guys— two 45-minute sides of music new and vintage from some of your favorite artists. Below, you can stream it via Mixcloud or download the two sides, too.

XTC will follow up its just-announced expanded reissue of 1992’s Nonsuch with a similarly made-over re-release of the band’s classic 1979 album Drums and Wires sometime next spring that will feature a new 5.1 Surround mix that Andy Partridge reveals is “so good it’s upped my opinion of the album.”

Next month, The Mission will embark on its first North American tour in 11 years, previewing its forthcoming new album The Brightest Light and a sizable dose of goth-rock classics. We’ve got a pair of tickets to the Sept. 5 concert at New York’s Irving Plaza to award one lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs reader.

Jane’s Addiction has just embarked on the Uproar Festival package tour with Alice in Chains, and while a new album doesn’t appear to be imminent, Perry Farrell and Co. last week released a standalone digital single, a two-and-a-half-minute rocker that you can check out right here.

This week’s new releases include 180-gram audiophile vinyl reissues of three albums from Scottish pop group Deacon Blue, the U.K. DVD version of MInistry’s new live set, and a five-disc box set called ‘Acid Rain: Definitive Original Acid & Deep House 1985-1991.’