Rising electro pop star Sam Sparro from LA has announced a string of dates around the UK in late September and early October.

Tickets go on sale on Friday morning (13th) at 9am. Expect more dates to be added soon – these are the only three that are listed on presale, but hopefully more will be coming soon.

Monday 29th September – Newcastle Carling Academy
Thursday 2nd October – Norwich UEA
Saturday 4th October – Shepherds Bush Empire

Now, we all know that I go on and on and on about one of my favourite bands, Delays. They’ve already announced a new tour starting this Thursday in Wolverhampton, and now they’ve announced the release dates for their lead single and album release. “Everything’s The Rush” will be released on Monday 28th April around the UK, with lead single “Hooray” being out a week before on Monday 21st April. The album will be their first for Fiction records, and will hopefully be their breakthrough effort. There’s a preview of Hooray on their myspace page now, and their blog entry announcing their album dates is here.

Meanwhile, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. has a new album, “Searching For The Hows And Whys” out on 10th March. I knew that 21 year old Sam Duckworth had a new album out in the early half of this year, but not this soon, so this makes me very happy. The tracks are sounding good – get a free download of Find The Time here. The video is here for those of you that are a bit more visually inclined.

Finally, there’s been a lot of hype about R.E.M.’s return around the blogoshphere this week, with Accelerate being announced as arriving on 31st March here in the UK. First single “Supernatural Superserious” sounds pretty good – a return to their rocky roots, and a definite positive step forward from their rather weak “Around The Sun”.

Expect to hear a lot more about each of these three albums over the  coming weeks here on There Goes The Fear.

Photo of R.E.M. is taken from their official website. 

Current indie darlings The Pigeon Detectives and GoodBooks are set to play a special show during London Fashion Week.

The bands will appear with Malvern singer/songwriter Sam Isaac at Gibson Guitar Studio on Tuesday 18th September as part of ‘The Big British Sound’ series of events.

To be able to go you’ll need to enter a prize draw on the Ben Sherman website.

If you don’t win tickets it’ll be shown on MTV Two on Saturday 13th October at 9pm as part of their ‘Best of British’ night.