Slicing Up Eyeballs caught up with the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn last week as he was rehearsing with The Baseball Project for a tour that hits both South By Southwest — for a marathon 14 gigs — and a series of spring training ballgames.

In honor of today’s release of ‘Collapse Into Now,” tonight’s Slicing Up Eyeballs show on Strangeways Radio took a look back at the career of R.E.M. Watch for a replay at 2 p.m. EST Friday.

This week’s new releases include brand-new albums from R.E.M. (‘Collapse Into Now’), Blancmange (‘Blanc Burn’) and Exene Cervenka (‘The Excitement of Maybe’), plus a new EP from The Primitives, two mid-period reissues from The Mission and a new KMFDM single.

Much of R.E.M.’s new album has been intentionally leaked by the band over the past two months, but now — one week before ‘Collapse Into Now’ actually arrives in stores — you can hear the whole thing, streaming here.

While R.E.M. is busy promoting its forthcoming new album ‘Collapse Into Now,’ the band will continue its reissue series with the release later this year of an expanded 25th anniversary edition of 1986’s ‘Lifes Rich Pageant.’

The R.E.M. pre-release train keeps on rolling, as the band this week released a new live-in-the-studio performance — filmed at Berlin’s famed Hansa Tonstudios — of ‘Collapse Into Now’ single ‘Mine Smell Like Honey.’

This latest round of links and stuff includes a look back at 20 years of R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion,’ a talk with OMD’s Andy McCluskey, a long-lost Dream Syndicate interview and a link to watch the BBC’s ‘Reggae Britannia’ documentary.