The Church this week treated fans to a free download of a brand-new Christmas song — it is, quite succinctly, called “Xmas” — that will appear as one of three previously unreleased bonus tracks appended to the forthcoming 2LP vinyl release of the band’s new record Further/Deeper.

The Church will follow February’s U.S. release of its new album Further/Deeper with a 19-date North American tour that will find the Aussie rockers performing both at San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival and the South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas.

The Church will release what it’s billing as its 25th studio album next month, a collection of new material that’s been christened Further/Deeper and which marks the long-running Australian rockers’ first record without guitarist Marty Willson-Piper, who was “not available” and has been replaced by Powderfinger’s Ian Haug.

“Armed only with their guitars,” Robyn Hitchcock and The Church’s Steve Kilbey are pairing up for a short run of Australian dates — just four have been announced — this April and May during which promoters promise “an unforgettable evening of whimsical lyricism and psychedelic nursery rhymes.”

The Church’s Steve Kilbey will perform with former bandmate Richard Ploog for the first time in nearly 25 years next month when the drummer — who left after 1990’s Gold Afternoon Fix — joins Kilbey and Mark Gable of The Choirboys for a “one-off special tour” called “Discover Australia: A Stumble Through Australian Pop History.”

The Church’s Steve Kilbey dropped a New Year’s surprise for fans, releasing a nearly 3-hour documentary that features performances, interviews and “general horsing around” that he filmed during the short 1991 U.S. tour by Jack Frost, his group with Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens.