With the Pet Shop Boys’ brand-new double-disc B-sides compilation ‘Format’ out in the U.K. this week, EMI Music has put together this nine-minute interview reel with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe discussing their method of writing B-sides, their format of choice and which song is most personal to them.

New (work) week, new month, new year… time, it would seem, for the latest in our monthly series of Auto Reverse mixtapes — two 45-minute sides to help you ease back into post-holiday life. Stream or download the two sides, crammed, as always, with some ’80s college-rock favorites and a few new tracks.

The Pet Shop Boys not only are expecting to release a new studio album in 2012, they’re currently assembling a brand-new B-sides compilation — a sequel to 1995’s 2CD set ‘Alternative’ that will be called ‘Format,’ and span the years 1996 to 2009 — for release in February, the duo revealed in a new interview this week.

Better known as the half of the Pet Shop Boys that wears hats and stands motionless behind banks of keyboards, Chris Lowe takes a rare vocal turn on a new cover of New Order’s ‘Subculture’ by Finnish DJ/producers Jori Hulkkonen and Alex Nieminen, performing under the name Stop Modernists.

Pet Shop Boys next month will release a 2CD set featuring their score to the Hans Christian Andersen adaptation ‘The Most Incredible Thing,’ the duo’s first-ever full-length ‘narrative ballet,’ set to debut in London in mid-March.

Synthpop duo Pet Shop Boys this weekend announced they’ve teamed up with choreographer Javier de Frutos to develop a full-length ballet based on the Hans Christian Andersen story ‘The Most Incredible Thing’ that’s set to premiere at London’s Sadler’s Wells dance house next March.