Promising ‘a larger tour later in the year,’ Duran Duran today began rolling out a series of North American club and theater dates throughout April on either side of its appearance at Coachella — with additional shows still to be announced.

This one made the rounds on a wide swath of music blogs this week, but in case you didn’t hear it, check out this cover of Depeche Mode’s 1987 single and ‘Music For The Masses’ favorite ‘Strangelove’ by Natasha Khan aka Bat For Lashes.

The R.E.M. pre-release train keeps on rolling, as the band this week released a new live-in-the-studio performance — filmed at Berlin’s famed Hansa Tonstudios — of ‘Collapse Into Now’ single ‘Mine Smell Like Honey.’

Janice Whaley is releasing the fruits of her ambitious The Smiths Project — vocal-only covers of all 71 songs The Smiths ever recorded — as a lavish 6CD box set. Fans can pre-order the collection through March 1.

Gang of Four wrapped up its recent North American tour — in support of the band’s first all-new studio album in more than 15 years — in Los Angeles this week, and while the, er, gang was in L.A., they recorded a 40-minute live set for KCRW.

This latest round of links and stuff includes a look back at 20 years of R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion,’ a talk with OMD’s Andy McCluskey, a long-lost Dream Syndicate interview and a link to watch the BBC’s ‘Reggae Britannia’ documentary.

Updating a couple Depeche Mode-related items we reported on, Erasure’s Vince Clarke this week tweeted that the joint album he’s working on with former bandmate Martin Gore is ‘almost done,’ while Andy Fletcher revealed that DM’s new remix album will arrive in April.