Boston post-punk masters Mission of Burma this summer will release ‘Unsound,’ their fourth post-reunion album (that’s three more records than they put out during their original run in the ’80s), and this week premiered the first track from that effort, called ‘Dust Devil.’

New Order performed its first U.S. concert in seven years Friday night at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival — but that won’t be the band’s only American appearance this year. The band says: ‘It’s great to back in the U.S., and we will be back for more shows later in the year when we have fulfilled our other live commitments around the world.’

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.

This spring, Dinosaur Jr’s frontman will release a six-track, self-titled debut from Heavy Blanket, which Outer Battery Records describes as ‘blistering psych-drenched instrumental blues jams from J Mascis and his stoner buddies.’ The album is due May 6 on CD and vinyl, plus a super-limited run of 200 purple-vinyl copies.

Fields of the Nephilim this month will release Ceromonies, a document of a pair of concerts at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2008 that will be available as a 2CD/DVD set, a double LP, a digital download and a ‘collector’s box’ that features all of that, plus ‘a wealth of extra artifacts.’

fIREHOSE — the band formed by Mike Watt and George Hurley following the 1985 death of their Minutemen bandmate D. Boon — will precede its spring tour and Coachella appearances with “lowFLOWs” the Columbia Anthology (’91-’93), a new 2CD set that compiles the band’s major-label output plus four unreleased cuts.

This fall, American Laundromat Recordings will celebrate the soundtrack to the 1984 cult classic ‘Repo Man’ with a track-by-track tribute, featuring the likes of Black Francis, Mike Watt, Matthew Sweet and Amanda Palmer and more covering songs originally recorded by Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Suicidal Tendencies.

The dB’s today announced a June 12 release date for Falling Off the Sky, the jangle-pop heroes’ first album in 25 years and first to feature the band’s original lineup — Peter Holsapple, Gene Holder, Will Rigby and Chris Stamey — in 30 years. Plus, the band’s playing six separate shows at South By Southwest this month.

Martin Gore isn’t the only Depeche Mode member who’s been busy during the band’s downtime: Frontman Dave Gahan has lent his well-known voice to electronic project Soulsavers for that group’s fourth album, ‘The Light the Dead See’ — and he’s already talking about making more music and touring with the group.

After a decade of inactivity, The The is back with its second album in just two years, another film score, this time for the documentary ‘Moonbug,’ about photographer Steve Pyke’s journey to document America’s space pioneers, bandleader Matt Johnson announced today on the group’s newly revamped website.

The Stranglers — singer-bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel, drummer Jet Black and keyboard player Dave Greenfield, plus former Toy Dolls guitarist Baz Warne — next week will release ‘Giants,’ their 17th studio album and first in six years, and are previewing the disc by streaming the single ‘Time Was Once On My Side.’

Steve Strange, frontman of ‘Fade to Grey’ hitmakers Visage and founder of the New Romantic hub The Blitz in London, is gearing up for a busy 2012, with a debut album due next month from electronic dance project Detroit Starzz and plans for a fourth Visage album — that group’s first in 28 years — to be released in May.

The Primitives today announced the release of their first full-length record in 21 years, a 14-track ‘concept covers album’ called ‘Echoes and Rhymes’ that will ‘revisit songs from semi-obscure bands from the ’60s with women lead singers’ in a variety of sonic styles.