Reunited 2 Tone ska legends The Specials performed ‘Gangsters’ and ‘Nite Klub’ on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ last night, and have begun setting dates for a late-summer return to North America, with concerts announced so far in New York, New Jersey and Toronto.

This week Beck and his Record Club gang tackle one of the lesser-known tracks on INXS’ ‘Kick,’ ‘Calling All Nations,’ offering up a nice, mellow jam with St. Vincent’s Annie Clark once again taking the mic.

Scottish dream-pop trio Cocteau Twins later this month will reissue their first three albums and a bonus EP on audiophile quality, 180-gram vinyl in a super-limited 5LP box set designed by 4AD’s famed Vaughan Oliver.

A cutting-edge theater company on the Mediterranean island of Malta has acquired the rights to use Depeche Mode songs such as ‘Personal Jesus’ and ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ in ‘Playing the Angel: The Musical,’ which is set to open early next year.

This year may be nearly half over, but it’s certainly not too late to catch up with The Smiths Project, an ambitious and impressive effort by San Jose, Calif., musician Janice Whaley to record layered vocal arrangements of every song ever released by The Smiths — all by the end of 2010.

That concert in Atlanta featuring ex-frontman Dean Wareham ‘performing the Galaxie 500 songbook’ that we told you about last month won’t be a one-off after all: Wareham and his Dean & Britta bandmates have announced a scattered string of such shows between August and December.

Devo not only celebrated yesterday’s release of ‘Something for Everybody’ — their first new album in 20 years — by holding a listening party for cats, the jump-suited band also turned up on ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ last night to perform the single ‘Fresh.’