Three days after R.E.M.’s 2008 tour wrapped in Mexico City, the band posted this six-song, 39-minute encore set from that final concert — an appearance Michael Stipe told fans would be ‘our last show for a long time,’ but now stands as the group’s final performance.

R.E.M. — the iconic college-rock band that soared to major-label uperstardom in the late ’80s and early ’90s before suffering the loss of a key original member — announced today that it has ‘decided to call it a day as a band’ after 31 years together.

With the first two titles of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s 2CD/1DVD reissue series — 1985′s ‘Psychocandy’ and 1987′s ‘Darklands’ — now out, Demon Music Group today released the final two trailers for the project, previews of 1994′s ‘Stoned & Dethroned’ and 1998′s ‘Munki,’ which will be released Oct. 3.

Boston college-radio favorites Scruffy the Cat — part of the late-’80s cowpunk scene that helped spawn the alt-country movement — have canceled a pair of reunion shows that had been scheduled for Oct. 21 and 22 at the band’s old haunt T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge, Mass.

This week’s episode of Slicing Up Eyeballs on Strangeways Radio featured new music from INXS, The Waterboys and Robert Smith of The Cure, old favorites by The House of Love and The Specials, plus listener requests for The Replacements, Wire and The Smiths.

The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Jim Reid this morning unveiled a brand-new song via the group’s Twitter, a track called ‘Black and Blues’ that may or may not be earmarked for a new Mary Chain record. The song is posted to Reid’s Soundcloud page with the note, ‘What I’ve been wasting my time with lately.’

Thirty-five years ago today, a nascent Siouxsie and the Banshees — with co-founders Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin joined by Sid Vicious on drums — played their first concert at the famed 100 Club Punk Special, opening for The Clash and the Sex Pistols. Hear it here.

The long-awaited This Mortal Coil anthology first announced a year ago — a 4CD box set featuring the 4AD collective’s three albums and a fourth disc of singles and rarities — finally will be released this November, while a Blu-ray disc called Tears in the Dropbox that includes all three albums in HD audio remains in the works.

This week’s new releases include the first two reissues from The Jesus and Mary Chain (‘Psychocandy,’ ‘Darklands’), a new album from The Waterboys (‘An Appointment with Mr. Yeats’), best-ofs from Throwing Muses (‘Anthology’) and 808 State (‘Blueprint’) and a 3CD/1DVD box set from Madness (‘A Guided Tour of Madness’).

This week’s headlines on Slicing Up Eyeballs included news of a new Kate Bush album, tour dates from X and Dinosaur Jr, new music from Simple Minds, INXS and The Waterboys, and a very cool contest for fans of The Smiths.

Jane’s Addiction has done a fairly good job keeping details of its forthcoming album ‘The Great Escape Artist’ under wraps — a tracklist has yet to be revealed, for example — but the band’s label, Capitol Records, has now released the cover art for the record.

Next month, The Japanese Popstars will release a digital “remix bundle” of their single ‘Take Forever’ — featuring Robert Smith of The Cure on lead vocals — featuring four different mixes of the song, including a slowed-down, dream-like contribution from Smith himself

Peter Murphy this week released the second music video from his current album ‘Ninth,’ a fairly straightforward performance clip for the single ‘Seesaw Sway,’ which you can see here. The video follows one made for ‘I Spit Roses’ earlier this year, and precedes the former Bauhaus’ leader’s tour of Europe and return to the U.S. this fall.