The University of San Francisco’s pioneering college radio station — KUSF, one of the first outlets to play punk rock and whose DJs are credited with helping break bands like Depeche Mode in the U.S. — was pulled off the air abruptly this week.

Another week, another song emerges off R.E.M.’s upcoming ‘Collapse Into Now’: This time, it’s track 3 off the album, ‘Überlin,’ which is being pushed as a single in Europe.

While punk rock is most closely associated with the London and New York City scenes of the late 1970s, the Los Angeles strain that erupted in the early ’80s was just as vital — something Dave Travis attempts to document in his forthcoming DVD ‘A History Lesson Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984.’

The Pixies are keeping the ‘Doolittle’ train rolling, announcing this morning a new round of 16 North American dates this April and May that mostly will hit Canadian cities — but with stops in Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Paul, Minn. thrown in as well.

Turns out Echo & The Bunnymen won’t be the only ones doing the full-album thing this spring: The Psychedelic Furs are planning to bring their ‘Talk Talk Talk’ tour to the ‘western U.S.’ for a round of dates in April in May.

With its new album ‘Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes’ arriving in stores yesterday, Social Distortion dropped by ‘Conan’ last night to rip through the record’s lead single ‘Machine Gun Blues.’

The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival tonight unveiled the official lineup for the April15-17 festival, which will include appearances by Duran Duran, Wire and — in one of the lineup’s biggest surprises — a reunion of Mick Jones’ post-Clash project Big Audio Dynamite.