Following the break-up of R.E.M. last year, frontman Michael Stipe was quick to say he had no intentions of making a solo album — but that doesn’t appear to be the case for guitarist Peter Buck. Longtime R.E.M. sideman Scott McCaughey broke the news this week to KIRO 97.3 radio show Seattle Sounds.

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.

This week’s new releases include The The’s soundtrack to the film ‘Tony’; a new best-of from Scritti Politti; Mike Watt’s punk opera ‘Hyphenated-Man’; the second album from Steve Wynn’s The Baseball Project; a new OMD single; and This Mortal Coil on vinyl.

Members of R.E.M.’s fan club have begun receiving their annual holiday single in the mail, and, like last year’s, the 2010 installment features the return of departed drummer Bill Berry on a cover of Darlene Love’s classic ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ — as well as an instrumental mashup of three tracks off the band’s forthcoming album ‘Collapse Into Now.’

The latest side project from R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck — the country-tinged Tired Pony, fronted by Snow Patrol singer Gary Lightbody — stopped by the ‘Late Show with David Letterman’ last night to perform ‘Dead American Writers,’ off the band’s just-released debut ‘The Place We Ran From.’

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.’

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.