It’s nearly Thanksgiving, which not only signals the opening of the Christmas holiday season, it means it’s also time to start making those musical lists and checking them twice. That’s right, it’s the second-annual Slicing Up Eyeballs Readers Poll, which will crown the year’s best new and reissued music from ’80s college rock veterans.

The playlist from Sunday night’s edition of ‘Dark Wave’ — the weekly ‘darker side of alternative’ show on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave — featured Concrete Blonde, Tubeway Army, The Teardrop Explodes, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Yazoo and much more.

Pioneering synthpop outfit Heaven 17 is treating fans to a free digital EP featuring a new acoustic recording of its 1982 hit ‘Let Me Go,’ plus live recordings of ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”‘and ‘Penthouse & Pavement.’ The ‘Rarities 2011’ EP is available as a free download in exchange for an e-mail address.

This week’s new releases include the first new album in six years from Kate Bush (’50 Words for Snow’), DVDs from Talking Heads (‘Chronology’) and U2 (‘From the Sky Down’), a new single from Erasure (‘Be With You’) and the domestic release of Magazine’s first new album in 30 years (‘No Thyself’).

Our round-up of what made headlines at Slicing Up Eyeballs over the past week includes posts about New Order, Joy Division, Morrissey, the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Kate Bush, Dinosaur Jr, The Fall and much, much more.

With his Thanksgiving-eve “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” outdoor concert canceled, Morrissey now has scheduled a second Los Angeles show to fill that night off. Moz will perform a newly announced concert Wednesday night at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.

Kate Bush this week premiered the first of three planned 2½-minute ‘animations’ created to promote her new album ’50 Words for Snow.’ The first clip is set to part of the 7-minute ‘Wild Man,’ and looks to be about a snowy expedition to find the Abominable Snowman.