Twisted troubadour Robyn Hitchcock is opening his vaults slightly to fans, this week posting a streaming collection of a dozen covers — recorded both live and in the studio recently — of songs by David Bowie, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Johnny Cash, the Grateful Dead and Nick Drake.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are treating their fans to a special gift each day leading up to Christmas as a thank-you for their support this year, beginning with a free MP3 of ‘Sister Marie Says’ (Soil In The Synth Remix), a new mix of the ‘History of Modern’ single.

With Duran Duran’s first album in three years — ‘All You Need Is Now’ — now available via iTunes, it should come as no surprise that the original music-video band has, in fact, released a new music video to promote lead-off single ‘All You Need Is Now.’ The clip, seen above, premiered Monday night on Yahoo Music.

Just days after R.E.M. started giving away MP3s of the opening track to 2011’s ‘Collapse Into Now,’ a second song — ‘It Happened Today,’ featuring Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder on backing vocals — from the album has hit the web after it was released as a single digitally in other parts of the world.

Christmas week is a light one for new releases, with only two notable titles: the digital edition of Duran Duran’s long-awaited ‘All You Need Is Now,’ and a 180-gram vinyl reissue of Ride’s shoegaze classic ‘Nowhere.’

Tonight’s ‘Dark Wave’ on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave featured a number of nice surprises, including a rare airing of a Morrissey album cut (‘Late Night, Maudlin Street’) and some lesser-played Peter Murphy (‘Marlene Dietrich’s Favorite Poem,’ ‘You’re So Close’).

With Duran Duran’s long-awaited new album ‘All You Need Is Now’ due out digitally on Tuesday, the band’s been doing loads of press here in the U.S. and back in Europe — including this live debut of lead-off single ‘All You Need Is Now’ on the U.K. television show ‘Loose Women’ this past Friday.