Sting this weekend posted to Instagram video of himself performing his 1985 single “Russians,” a plea to stop the nuclear brinksmanship during the Cold War.

The list of artists who are believed to have lost tapes in the 2008 fire that destroyed a Universal Music Group warehouse at Universal Studios in Los Angeles includes R.E.M., Sonic Youth, The Damned, The Police, Squeeze, The Dream Syndicate, Oingo Boingo, Suzanne Vega, Adam Ant, Joe Jackson and more.

Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs. All releases due out this Friday unless noted.  This week’s titles include multiple remastered box sets from Kate Bush, a new album from The Good, The Bad & The Queen and more.

There’s a new documentary about XTC in the works that’s currently titled “This Is Pop,” and a 6-minute, 20-second trailer for the film — featuring archival footage of the band and much screen time by frontman Andy Partridge — has made its way online. You can watch the whole thing here.

With The Afghan Whigs set to embark on an extensive fall tour later this month in support of reunion album Do To The Beast, Greg Dulli and Co. today debuted a stark, dark cover of The Police’s 1981 hit single “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.”

The AV Club recently launched Undercover 2012 — the third round in its ‘let’s have a band cram into a small, round room and cover a song off a list’ web series — and the latest clip finds Canadian dream-pop outfit Memoryhouse giving The Police’s 1981 hit ‘Everything Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ a makeover.

‘We’re the Kids in America,’ the third chapter of BBC Four’s ‘How the Brits Rocked America: Go West,’ features interviews with John Lydon, Robert Smith, Elvis Costello, Jim Kerr, Ian McCulloch, New Order’s Stephen Morris and Peter Hook, Adam Ant, Bob Geldof, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, and many more.

Twenty eight years ago today, the first of what would turn out to be two multi-day US Festivals — envisioned by their organizer, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, as ‘Woodstock West’ — opened in blistering 110-degree heat at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernadino County, Calif.

The classic 1981 concert film “Urgh! A Music War” — which captured dozens of punk, New Wave and post-punk bands live on stage — quietly […]

Boston modern-rock radio station WBCN (104.1 FM), aka “The Rock of Boston,” will be pulled off the air next month and survive as a Web-only […]