R.E.M. this week sent fan-club members the band’s final holiday single, capping a nearly 25-year-old tradition with a 2-track CD featuring live renditions of ‘Perfect Circle’ and ‘Life and How To Live It,’ the latter of which was recorded at the band’s last-ever concert in Mexico City in November 2008.

The revered final album from Talk Talk — 1991′s ‘Laughing Stock,’ which saw the English group fully abandon its synthpop roots for a more a more experimental sound — will receive its first-ever vinyl release in the U.S. this fall alongside a reissue of frontman Mark Hollis’ lone solo album, originally released in 1998.

Saturday night, following an eight-year absence, MTV’s iconic alternative-music show ‘120 Minutes’ returned with a new format and a familiar face: late-’90s host Matt Pinfield. The whole show is now online; watch it here.

The fairly predictable playlist for Sirius XM’s ‘Dark Wave’ received a much-appreciated shakeup tonight thanks to guest host Peter Murphy, who managed to slip a barrage of unlikely artists ranging from Antony and the Johnsons to Sxip Shirey into the mix.

Crooner Bryan Ferry enlisted a star-studded cast — including Roxy Music bandmates Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay — for this fall’s ‘Olympia,’ his first album of new material in eight years and his first recorded collaboration with those ex-bandmates since 1973’s ‘For Your Pleasure.’

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke brought his solo band Atoms for Peace to the Fox Theater in Oakland, Calif., last night as part of the group’s pre-Coachella tour, and whipped out a surprise cover: Joy Division’s classic ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart.’

This week’s new releases include Peter Gabriel’s new orchestral covers album, a live Pet Shop Boys CD/DVD, Niter Ebb’s first new record in 15 years and new reissues from Pixies, Bomb the Bass and 808 State.