The full 17-song concert R.E.M. recorded for the ‘Austin City Limits’ TV show in 2008 — including three songs that never have been broadcast — will be released on DVD late next month, the band announced today.

R.E.M. tonight posted a minute-long video of the band’s recent recording sessions in Nashville, showing, in typically enigmatic fashion, Michael Stipe playing high-pitched noises off some kind of contraption while the rest of the band and assorted personnel record a round of handclaps — after which Peter Buck asks, ‘Should we double track it?’

The A.V. Club wraps up its summer-long web series ‘Undercover: 25 Bands, 25 Cover Songs, 1 Small Room’ with this final installment: Shambling indie rockers The Walkman take on R.E.M.’s 1985 single ‘Driver 8,’ from the just-reissued ‘Fables of the Reconstruction.’

College-rock fixture-to-be R.E.M. released its landmark debut EP, ‘Chronic Town,’ 28 years ago today, and to commemorate the anniversary, we present alternate versions of three of the record’s five songs: a faster version of ‘Wolves, Lower’; ‘Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)’ with different vocals and no fadeout; and ‘Shaking Through,’ featuring an organ in the mix.

This week’s installment of the A.V. Club’s series ‘Undercover: 25 Bands, 25 Cover Songs, 1 Small Room’ features indie rockers Superchunk tearing through a cover of The Cure’s classic 1985 single ‘Inbetween Days.’

This week on the A.V. Club’s ‘Undercover’ series, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump goes solo-acoustic to offer his take on The Wedding Present’s 1987 single ‘My Favourite Dress.’

The members of R.E.M. today marked the release of the 25th anniversary edition of ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ by looking to their future, announcing they’ve ‘just completed recording their next record in Berlin.’

This week’s new releases include expanded reissues from R.E.M. (‘Fables of the Reconstruction’), Concrete Blonde (‘Bloodletting’), The Teardrop Explodes (‘Kilimanjaro’) and That Petrol Emotion (‘Babble’), plus a new compilation from My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult (‘Sinister Whisperz’) and the belated U.S. release of Crowded House’s new album ‘Intriguer.’

R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey joined Pearl Jam in Berlin last night to rip through the MC5’s classic ‘Kick Out the Jams’ at a concert that also featured the Seattle rockers debuting a new cover of Public Image Ltd.’s ‘Public Image.’

With the expanded reissue of R.E.M.’s third album, 1985’s ‘Fables of the Reconstruction,’ now just two weeks away, the folks at Capitol/I.R.S. are starting to give fans a taste of some of the 14 previously unreleased demos that will make up the second disc of the set.

Word emerged this spring — via bandleader Colin Meloy’s Twitter feed — that R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck would be contributing to The Decemberists’ upcoming sixth album — and we’ve now got photographic evidence, thanks to a series of snapshots posted on R.E.M.’s official site today.

The Library of Congress today added R.E.M.’s debut single ‘Radio Free Europe’ — one of the cornerstones of ’80s college rock — to its National Recording Registry, honoring the landmark song as ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.’

The 2010 installment of Athens PopFest will feature headlining sets by Mission of Burma and The Wedding Present — which will play 1989’s ‘Bizarro’ in its entirety — as well as Dead Milkmen singer Joe Jack Talcum and the reunited Oh-OK, the early ’80s act featuring Lynda Stipe, sister of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe.