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.