Duran Duran next month will receive its first-ever double-disc best-of, the 34-track ‘The Biggest and the Best,’ which covers the years 1981 through 1989, collecting 20 of the band’s Top 40 hits as well as some “key album tracks” — while also omitting some pretty sizable hits from the band’s early ’90s renaissance.

]The first three solo albums from Echo & The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch are set to be reissued by Demon Music Group in expanded collectors’ editions — packed with bonus tracks including non-album singles, B-sides, live cuts and remixes — to coincide with the singer’s U.K. acoustic tour this September.

Demon Music Group late next month will reissue all six albums from the Roddy Frame-led Scottish indie-pop act Aztec Camera in 2CD and single-disc expanded editions, each featuring an assortment of bonus cuts including non-album singles, B-sides, remixes and, in the case of the band’s penultimate album, a full bonus live disc.

Jimmy Somerville’s three mid-’80s studio albums with synthpop groups Bronski Beat and the Communards each will be reissued this summer as expanded double-disc sets loaded with a host of B-sides, remixes, live tracks and more — with some of the material making its way to CD for the first time ever.

With expanded reissues of Sugar’s catalog — 1992′s landmark ‘Copper Blue,’ the 1993 companion EP ‘Beaster’ and 1994 sophomore album ‘File Under: Easy Listening’ — coming out over the next few weeks in the U.K., Merge Records has announced it will release trimmed-down versions in the U.S. later this summer.

There’s a flurry of activity coming from The English Beat — or as they’re more properly known, The Beat — as Shout! Factory this week announced plans to release both a new single-disc best-of and a 5CD box set featuring the band’s three albums and two discs of bonus material.

Following up on last fall’s vintage Jim Reid mix, Demon Music Group — the label behind the new Jesus and Mary Chain reissues — posted a new mix by ex-JAMC rhythm section Bobby Gillespie and Douglas Hart representing what was on their tour-bus mixtapes during the band’s early days.