They Might Be Giants is planning a three-night New Year’s bash in New York City this December at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, a run that will find the band spotlighting 1988’s Lincoln and 1990’s Flood, plus playing new songs — and there’ll be horns.

After suffering a heart attack last year and seeing the ‘implosion’ of the American Music Club reunion after two mid-to-late 2000s albums, former frontman Mark Eitzel this fall will release a brand-new solo album called Don’t Be a Stranger that his label, Merge Records, is pitching as his ‘finest solo album in over a decade.’

As promised, the reactivated New Order — Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, 2000s-era guitarist Phil Cunningham and Bad Lieutenant bassist Tom Chapman — will return to North America this fall for the first time since 2005, performing at least seven dates in October.

The Cure’s now a few day into a month-long break in its summer festival tour, and frontman Robert Smith says the band will use the time to record with new guitarist Reeves Gabrels for the first time — plus, he claims, the long-promised ‘Mixed Up 2’ will come out before Christmas with new remixes by the likes of Mogwai and Cranes.

Earlier this year, Martin Gore promised the next Depeche Mode album will be out ‘no later than early 2013,’ and now we’ve got a better idea of what that means: DM manager Jonathan Kessler tells Rolling Stone that the band’s 13th studio album is due out in April 2013 and will be followed by a ‘full world tour.’

Pet Shop Boys have recorded a cover of the Bee Gees’ 1968 hit single ‘I Started A Joke’ in tribute to the late Robin Gibb — the band co-founder who died in May at age 62 — and will include it as a B-side to the duo’s upcoming single “Winner,” the first to be released off the forthcoming album ‘Elysium.’

This week’s new releases include the U.S. reissue of Sugar’s catalog, a live CD/DVD from Propaganda’s Claudia Brücken, a live CD from Happy Mondays, an audiophile vinyl pressing of Yazoo’s ‘Upstairs at Eric’s,’ the U.S. release of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Secret World Live,’ and reissues of Icehouse’s ‘Primitive Man’ and ‘Man of Colours.’