This spring, Dinosaur Jr’s frontman will release a six-track, self-titled debut from Heavy Blanket, which Outer Battery Records describes as ‘blistering psych-drenched instrumental blues jams from J Mascis and his stoner buddies.’ The album is due May 6 on CD and vinyl, plus a super-limited run of 200 purple-vinyl copies.

Legendary Minutemen bassist Mike Watt this May will publish a new book called ‘On and Off Bass’ that combines his 2000s-era tour diaries with his nature photography, and he’ll launch the memoir with a pair of release parties — including a New York show that’ll find him jamming with Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and Murph.

Dinosaur Jr is back in the recording studio, working on its follow-up to 2009’s ‘Farm,’ according to bassist Lou Barlow’s daily Twitter account of the sessions, which includes an apparent admonition from the band’s management to ‘stop tweeting.’

Dinosaur Jr fans who missed the reunited trio’s limited run of shows featuring a full-album performance of 1988’s ‘Bug’ last year can now relive the experience vicariously through six fans who were selected to document the band’s June 25, 2011, show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., for a new DVD and Blu-ray out next month.

Lou Barlow has been treating fans to a treasure trove of free, rare and often unreleased music via his e-mail newsletter, and with his latest dispatch, he reaches back all the way back to 1983 to share a ‘lost’ 3-song practice tape from Deep Wound, his pre-Dinosaur Jr band with J Mascis.

Following this summer’s cassette-only reissue of ‘Bug,’ the reunited Dinosaur Jr this fall will re-release that 1988 album along with the band’s first two records — 1985’s ‘Dinosaur’ and 1987’s ‘You’re Living All Over Me’ — on vinyl this fall, the trio’s current label, Jagjaguwar, announced this week.

Filmmaker Brad Katz is appealing to music fans to help fund his documentary ‘Just Gimme Indie Rock! The Story of an Underground Uprising,’ a film project he describes as ‘an epic trilogy that spans a generation’ — tracing the rise of the independent label scene in the early ’80s through the alternative explosion of the ’90s and into indie resurgence of the 2000s.

J Mascis has delivered a second video from his new, mostly acoustic album ‘Several Shades of Why,’ and while the clip for ‘It is Done’ isn’t as weird as the Dinosaur Jr leader’s ‘Not Enough’ video, it’s a charmer nonetheless.

Out on tour in support of his new mostly acoustic solo album ‘Several Shades of Why’, Dinosaur Jr frontman J Mascis hauled his acoustic up to the studios of Minneapolis’ 89.3 The Current to perform a trio of songs live on the air earlier this month.

With his new album ‘Several Shades of Why’ now in stores and a U.S. tour underway, Dinosaur Jr guitar slayer J Mascis today released a weird animated video for the record’s first single, ‘Not Enough.’

This week’s new releases include brand-new albums from Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and Eleventh Dream Day, plus the Pet Shop Boys’ ballet score, Black Francis’ silent-film score, the monster reissue of Primal Scream’s ‘Screamadelica’ and a new edition of Nick Lowe’s ‘Labour of Lust.’

A week before the disc arrives in stores, the folks at Sub Pop Records have begun streaming ‘Several Shades of Why,’ the first-ever solo studio album from Dinosaur Jr guitar god J Mascis. Hear the whole thing right here.

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.