Duran Duran will return to American shores this August for another round of dates in support of ‘All You Need Is Now’, with at least a dozen shows scheduled so far — some of which are set for such off-the-beaten-path destinations as Kettering, Okla., and Mashantucket, Conn.

‘We’re the Kids in America,’ the third chapter of BBC Four’s ‘How the Brits Rocked America: Go West,’ features interviews with John Lydon, Robert Smith, Elvis Costello, Jim Kerr, Ian McCulloch, New Order’s Stephen Morris and Peter Hook, Adam Ant, Bob Geldof, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, and many more.

One-man electropop outfit Cassettes Won’t Listen — aka Brooklyn’s Jason Drake, who last fall released his own version of Duran Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’ and has remade songs by The Cure and INXS — returns with another cover of an ’80s alt classic: the Pixies’ ‘Hey.’ Stream it here.

As 2011 quickly winds to an end, we’re happy to roll out our fourth and final days’ worth of results from our second-annual Slicing Up Eyeballs Readers Poll, in which nearly 500 of you cast ballots for your favorite music of the year. Today, we bring you the big one: The best albums of 2011.

Today we roll out the third of four days’ worth of results from our second-annual Slicing Up Eyeballs Readers Poll, in which nearly 500 of you cast ballots for your favorite new, reissued and freshly compiled music of the year. This time, it’s your Top 10 singles of the year.

The reunited New Order — featuring keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, but not bassist Peter Hook — apparently will perform in the U.S. for the first time in nearly seven years next March as part of the lineup of the electro-centric Ultra Music Festival in Miami.

Our round-up of the past week’s highlights on Slicing Up Eyeballs includes posts about Duran Duran, Big Country, Peter Gabriel, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Pet Shop Boys, R.E.M. and Brian Eno, Morrissey, Killing Joke and The Stone Roses — plus our free November mixtape.

Long known for their supermodel-filled ’80s videos, Duran Duran takes it a step further in their new nine-minute, Jonas Akerlund-directed “short film” for All You Need is Now single “Girl Panic!” by casting Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova and Helena Christensen as the band’s members.

This week’s headlines on Slicing Up Eyeballs included posts about about Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, The Mission, Big Country, New Order, Robyn Hitchcock and much, much more, plus news on how to score a free Slicing Up Eyeballs sticker.

Cassettes Won’t Listen is no stranger to ’80s alternative fare, having covered, in recent years, The Cure’s ‘Let’s Go to Bed’ and INXS’s ‘Need You Tonight. Now comes a brand-new cover of Duran Duran’s early ’90s comeback smash, ‘Ordinary World.’

Mission frontman Wayne Hussey this fall will release an album with All About Eve lead singer Julianne Regan featuring ‘strange and interesting interpretations of already loved songs alongside new songs’ — including covers of Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and David Bowie.

Much has been made about the loss of album art in the download age, but pop-culture maven Matthew Chojnacki argues that even more endangered are the 7- and 12-inch single sleeves of the 1980s — ephemeral splashes of music history that he’s compiled in the new book ‘Put the Needle on the Record: The 1980s at 45 Revolutions Per Minute.’

Today, apparently, is Duran Duran Appreciation Day 2011, and to mark the occasion, the band is offering a free download of a brand-new 7½-minute club version of ‘All You Need’ Is Now track ‘Other People’s Lives,’ resurrecting its tradition of cutting longer ‘Night Versions’ of songs for the dancefloor.

After months of cancellations due to Simon Le Bon’s vocal problems, Duran Duran on Tuesday rolled out a 24-date tour that will bring the band back to North America this fall — dates that would have followed the band’s most recent round of scrapped concerts.