Musician and activist Amanda Palmer has just released a rush-recorded, eight-song charity album in response to the devastating Australian bushfires, and you can hear its lead-off single — a cover of Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning” with vocals by Missy Higgins — right here. Full details and such.

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. News this week about Morrissey, Bauhaus, Midnight Oil, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and more.

Midnight Oil is planning to release not one but two new musical projects this year, beginning with an eight-song mini-album called The Makaratta Project recorded with “some of our First Nations friends” to be released this summer, followed by a proper Oils studio album due out later in the year, according to the band’s website.

Midnight Oil played a pair of small Australian concerts in recent days ahead of a short run of European dates, and treated fans to both the debut of the band’s first new song in 16 years and the group’s first full-album performance of Diesel and Dust in its native country. Hear the new song right here.

Midnight Oil has confirmed it will return to the recording studio later this year, with the band’s drummer Rob Hirst saying their live reunion “was such a positive experience that it made us even hungrier to get back to making new music together.” Full details right here, including the latest tour dates.

A live set recorded at Walt Disney World during Midnight Oil’s U.S. tour in support of 1997 album Breathe will receive a limited-edition double-vinyl release — one LP will be red, the other white — on Record Store Day in the United States next month. Full details including tracklist and artwork right here.