Had a great opportunity this past week to guest-blog on USA Today’s pop-culture hub Pop Candy while Whitney Matheson is out on maternity leave. Below is a collection of those posts if anyone cares to take a gander, spanning such pop-culture goodness as “Star Wars,” Record Store Day, “Doctor Who” and the demise of INXS.

Seemingly out of the, uh, blue, R.E.M. this week debuted a music video for the song “Blue” off swan song ‘Collapse into Now.’ The clip, posted here, is directed by actor James Franco and features a hodge-podge of visual imagery, including shots of Lindsay Lohan.

For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind, we present this 1990 appearance by Andrew Eldtritch of The Sisters of Mercy, who chats with host Dave Kendall about the band’s then-new third (and still final) album Vision Thing, in segments sandwiched between a showing of the video for that record’s epic single, “More.”

This Christmas marks the 25th anniversary of the boozy holiday classic “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl, so, to mark the occasion, the band is reissuing the 1987 single in a variety of digital and vinyl formats with new cover art.

For our latest installment of Vintage Video, we turn, yet again, to the fabulous archive of the German TV show “Rockpalast,” this time for a full, 75-minute concert by the inimitable Siouxsie and the Banshees, filmed on July 19, 1981, in Colgone, Germany, just weeks after the release of the band’s fourth studio album, ‘Juju.’

The U.K.’s Fire Records next month will release a new 2CD career-spanning overview of resurrected Boston post-punk legends Mission of Burma, compiling 29 tracks from both halves of the band’s career to serve both as an introduction and a preface to the label’s upcoming full-catalog reissue series.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour featured new music from Adam Ant, Camper Van Beethoven and Jah Wobble & Keith Levene, plus old favorites from Pigface, Talking Heads, The Stone Roses, Fad Gadget, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Morrissey, Dramarama and The Timelords.

Johnny Marr today premiered the first song off his forthcoming solo record The Messenger by releasing a starkly black-and-white video for the album’s hypnotic title track — which you can watch right here. The album, written and produced by the former Smiths guitarist, who also handles vocal duties, is due out Feb. 26.

Earlier this month, Australia’s MAX TV network aired an hour-long documentary on Midnight Oil as part of its “The Artist’s Story” series, and now, thanks to the folks at the Midnight Oil Fan Page on Facebook, those of us who aren’t Down Under can watch this excellent career overview.

It’s been a big year for fans of Bob Mould’s post-Hüsker Dü act Sugar, with competing — and slightly different — sets of CD reissues out in the U.S. and U.K., plus live performances of Copper Blue around the world. Now, the U.K.’s Demon Music Group is compiling the band’s complete recordings in an 8-record audiophile vinyl set.

This week’s new releases include Soundgarden’s first new album in 16 years, plus brand-new studio albums from Brian Eno, PiL’s Jah Wobble and Keith Levene and Madness, plus a Sonic Youth live album recorded in 1985 and a live Mudhoney DVD filmed in 1988 in Berlin.

Tonight’s edition of “Dark Wave” — the Sunday night “darker side of alternative” show on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave — featured Joy Division, David J, Specimen, Concrete Blonde, Skinny Puppy, Theatre of Pain, The Wolfgang Press, The Mission, Revolting Cocks, The Cure, Ministry and much, much more.

With the 15th anniversary of Michael Hutchence’s death approaching later this month, INXS took to the stage in Perth, Australia, on Sunday night for what appears to be the final time, as Australian media are reporting that drummer Jon Farriss announced during the concert that it would be the band’s last-ever performance.