Having spent much of last year touring ‘Unknown Pleasures,’ bassist Peter Hook will continue to relive his Joy Division days in 2011, performing the band’s second album — 1980’s ‘Closer’ — in May and releasing an EP of new recordings of four Joy Division songs — including one that’s never been released.

Reunited synthpop group Blancmange returns this week with ‘Blanc Burn’ — its fourth album, and first in more than a quarter century — as well as an eight-date U.K. tour, although ailing co-founder Stephen Luscombe has been advised by doctors to skip the trek.

The long-in-the-works documentary about The Replacements and their rabid fans — a film dubbed, appropriately, ‘Color Me Obsessed’ — finally is finished and will make its world premiere later this month at the Gasparilla International Film Festival in Tampa, Fla.

Today is oddball troubadour Robyn Hitchcock’s birthday — he’s 58 — and to mark the occasion, we dug up a pair of rare clips on YouTube featuring The Egyptians performing on something called ‘2Hip4TV’ in 1988.

Gang of Four today unveiled the second music video filmed for its new album ‘Content’: a moody, live performance clip for the slow-burner ‘It Was Never Gonna Turn Out Too Good.’ Watch it here.

Although it still hasn’t been released in the U.S. yet, INXS has issued an official video for its re-recording of ‘Don’t Change’ to promote last year’s ‘Original Sin’ album, which found the band overhauling its old songs with new singers filling in for the late Michael Hutchence.

The R.E.M. pre-release train keeps on rolling, as the band this week released a new live-in-the-studio performance — filmed at Berlin’s famed Hansa Tonstudios — of ‘Collapse Into Now’ single ‘Mine Smell Like Honey.’

Gang of Four wrapped up its recent North American tour — in support of the band’s first all-new studio album in more than 15 years — in Los Angeles this week, and while the, er, gang was in L.A., they recorded a 40-minute live set for KCRW.

Morrissey in April will release a new greatest-hits collection — the 18-track ‘The Very Best of Morrissey’ — featuring an unreleased, Siouxsie-less version of ‘Interlude,’ and will precede the set with a single backed by two unreleased ‘Viva Hate’ outtakes.

To promote the release of its new ‘Twist of Fate’ digital remix bundle, Bad Lieutenant — featuring New Order frontman Bernard Sumner — is offering up a free download of a bonus mix not included on the five-track EP: Mark Reeder’s No Fate Radio Remix

It’s Ian Brown’s birthday today — he’s turning 48 — so to mark the occasion, we present one of those oft-told tales of Stone Roses lore: The band’s appearance on BBC’s ‘The Late Show’ in September 1989, which ended less than a minute into a live performance of ‘Made of Stone’ when the power abruptly cut out.

To help promote ‘Several Shades of Why,’ the forthcoming solo album from Dinosaur Jr mastermind J Mascis, the folks at Sub Pop Records have posted this rather odd interview with some woman named Maureen.

The surviving members of The Cars today released the video for their first single in 24 years: ‘Blue Tip,’ off the reunion album ‘Move Like This,’ due out May 10 via Concord Music. Watch it here.