For $200,000, New Order re-recorded ‘Blue Monday’ — allegedly the best-selling 12-inch of all time — for a Sunkist TV commercial (which also uses footage from the band’s Kathryn Bigelow-directed video for ‘Touched By the Hand of God’).

In this clip recorded for Levi’s ‘Pioneer Sessions,’ James Mercer — leader of The Shins and one-half of Broken Bells — throws down a solo-acoustic cover of Squeeze’s classic ‘Goodbye Girl,’ which also is available as a free download.

Taking a pause from the ongoing Dinosaur Jr reunion, Lou Barlow this week released a new digital EP called ‘= Sentridoh III’ — recorded with his current backing band, The Missingmen — and announced two rounds of North American summer dates.

Monday, Duran Duran co-founder Nick Rhodes — who today celebrates his 48th birthday — posted a short video update on YouTube to bring fans up to date on the band’s lengthy sessions for its 13th studio album.

This week, Beck and his Record Club crew — St. Vincent, Liars and Os Mutantes — checks in with the title track of INXS’ ‘Kick,’ delivering one of the more rocking covers of the project.

The 2008 reunion tour by Yazoo — or Yaz, as the Vince Clarke/Alison Moyet group was called here in the U.S. — will be documented with a two-disc live album called ‘Reconstructed Live’ that’s due out this fall, the band announced today on its official site.

In this late-’70s news footage from a Kansas City TV station, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe is among the fans interviewed about the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ phenomenon — in full Frank-N-Furter regalia.

This week, Beck and his Record Club cohorts — St. Vincent, Liars and Os Mutantes — cover INXS’ ‘Mystify,’ the fifth and final single, in the U.K. at least, from 1987’s ‘Kick.’

With the release of its second post-reunion album, ‘Intriguer,’ approaching, Crowded House has released an official video for the record’s opening track and first single, ‘Saturday Sun.’

To get fans excited for the June 21 release of The Mission UK’s ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ compilation, frontman Wayne Hussey has assembled this 7½-minute promo clip that samples a good number of the record’s tracks.

This week’s installment of the A.V. Club’s Undercover series finds The Wedding Present delivering a great, fuzzed-out take on The Rolling Stones classic ’19th Nervous Breakdown.’

The generally dour Mark E. Smith, mastermind of The Fall, brightens up a bit — cracks a smile, even — in this new video for ‘England’s Heartbeat,’ an unofficial World Cup single supporting England that’s due out next month.

With BP’s disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil leak now surpassing the Exxon Valdez as the worst oil spill in U.S. history, it’s only fitting that we mark Sunday’s 20th anniversary of the Midnight Oil ‘guerrilla action’ in front of the Exxon building in New York City.