Having wrapped their global Pandemonium Tour with a final show last December, the Pet Shop Boys now are at work writing material for their upcoming 11th album, which they hope to begin recording next month and then release sometime next year, singer Neil Tennant says in a recent post to the band’s official website.

Kate Bush will give fans their first taste of her new album ’50 Words for Snow’ — the singer’s first collection of new material since 2005′s ‘Aerial’ — next week when she releases ‘Wild Man’ as the record’s first single via digital outlets worldwide.

Peter Murphy next week will release ‘The Secret Bees of Ninth,’ a six-track digital-only EP that features the previously unreleased songs ‘Rose Hunter,’ ‘Good Works’ and ‘Secret,’ plus bonus and extended tracks from his most recent studio album, ‘Ninth.’

This month’s tape features new music from Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain and INXS with new lead singer Ciaran Gribbin, plus rarities from The Smiths, Elvis Costello and Ian McCulloch and classics from The Replacements, Propaganda, Camper Van Beethoven and the late R.E.M.

R.E.M.’s rare 1981 ‘Cassette Set’ demo tape — 400 copies were sent to labels, clubs and journalists — has surfaced online, giving many fans their first taste of producer Mitch Easter’s original mixes of ‘Radio Free Europe,’ ‘Sitting Still’ and ‘White Tornado.’

ans of The Jesus and Mary Chain who already have purchased or are awaiting shipment of the new 2CD/1DVD reissue of ‘Darklands’ take note: Demon Music Group has acknowledged that there is a ‘mastering glitch’ on Disc 1 of the set that has resulted in tracks 8 through 16 beginning slightly ahead of their respective track markers.

This week’s new releases include brand-new albums from Erasure (‘Tomorrow’s World’) and Pop Will Eat Itself (‘New Noise Designed by a Sadist’), plus vinyl reissues of Dinosaur Jr’s first three albums, the U.K. vinyl-only and CD-and-vinyl editions of The Smiths’ ‘Complete’ box set and the final two Jesus and Mary Chain reissues.