We're happy to see that perennially knit-capped, Mercury Prize-winning Brit singer/songwriter Damon Gough -- aka Badly Drawn Boy -- is back for his first new recordings since 2006's Born In the U.K. Similar to his acclaimed songcycle/score for the '03 Nick Hornby film About A Boy, new album is Is There Nothing We Could Do", a collection of 15 new songs "from and inspired by" the upcoming British TV film The Fattest Man In Britain starring busy character actor Timothy Spall. New project arrives overseas on December 14 -- hopefully we'll see a U.S. release in the new year. We'll get some new music up along with a "proper" feature soon.

Jam/pop band ALO returns with a new album via Jack Johnson's Brushfire Universal imprint: Man of the World, due February 9, and their first since 2007's Roses and Clover. Keyboardist Zach Gill, who went to college with Johnson, released a solo album last year: Zach Gill's Stuff.

As noted recently, fellow Brushfire labelmates (and DC faves) Rogue Wave have their new album set for a March 2 street...and it now has a title: Permalight. "It was recorded with the ever-so-talented Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse) in Oxford, Mississippi. As I mentioned several months back, this record promises to be a more visceral kind of album. so make sure you're wearing some good shoes."

Just an aside -- we're always open to hearing new music... If you've heard something you like that you think makes sense for Direct Current, please let us know! Drop us a note: info@directcurrentmusic.com. And a shout out to our new friend Alex Wilhelm at crazedhits.com, who turned us onto the wonderful Ladies of the Canyon this week.

Elvis Costello will release a full-length, stand-alone version of his Live At Hollywood High concert on January 12, the second release of his "Costello Show Live Performance Series". Recorded in June of 1978, the concert was excerpted for a three-track single included with his original Armed Forces album and later with some additional tracks for the expanded version of Armed Forces. Elvis' Live At El Mocambo was released this past September 29 and he's promising more to come...

Another DC favorite Peter Bradley Adams, formerly of Eastmountainsouth, got some nice exposure this week when his song "Darkening Sky" was featured on the latest episode of The Mentalist. We're looking to make this a Daily Track soon, but for now listen at his myspace page here. The song is taken from his recently released album Traces.

Stephin Merritt and his Magnetic Fields unplug this time around for Realism (January 26, Nonesuch) an album said to be drawing "inspiration from late 1960s / early 70s orchestral and psychedelic folk for an all-acoustic set." New project comes two years after the epic Distortion, an album hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the best records of [their] career.”