Our good friends at Strangeways Radio are putting together a new week-in-review video that will recap the news posted at Slicing Up Eyeballs and on the Strangeways site throughout the preceding week, hosted by Velvet Rebel. This week’s episode features news about Depeche Mode, The House of Love, Boomtown Rats and more.

The first solo album in a decade from Boomtown Rats leader Bob Geldof — the cheekily titled How to ‘Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell’ — is now out in the U.S., and to help mark the occasion, Mercury/Vagrant Records slipped us three copies of the CD to award to lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs readers.

A couple days before making headlines at South By Southwest by declaring America and its music “exhausted,” former Boomtown Rats leader Bob Geldof dropped by ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ to promote his new album ‘How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell.’

Now less than a month away, the schedule for the South By Southwest music festival is starting to solidify, with a host of ’80s college rock vets slated to make appearances in Austin, Texas, next month — including Duran Duran, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Edwyn Collins, World Party, J Mascis and more.

Midnight Oil’s classic 1987 hit “Beds are Burning” — originally about Aboriginal land rights in Australia — is being turned into an all-star, new-millennium anthem […]