-- Usually when a band announces an "extended break," it means they are too afraid to say they broke up. Not the case with Le Tigre. The electro-punk trio are back in the studio working with Christina Aguilera, though there isn't much more information available than that. The group has been quiet since touring off 2005's This Island. In the interim, members J.D. Samson and Johnna Fateman formed a new project, Men, while frontwoman Kathleen Hanna taught an art class at N.Y.U.

-- Touch and Go Fanzine, the classic punk publication out of which the record label evolved, is set to publish all of its 22 issues in book form in 2010. The low-budget rag was started in 1979 in Lansing, Michigan by Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson. It kept punk fanatics up to date on the scenes in New York, Philly, D.C. and abroad while promoting bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, and the Misfits. At its peak, Touch and Go only pressed 1,000 copies, so the long-overdue book is good news for anyone who wants a glimpse at punk's formative years.

-- New York singer-songwriter Kenny Rankin died of lung cancer Sunday at age 69. Rankin signed to Decca Records as a teenager and later moved to Columbia. He played on Bob Dylan's first electric album, 1965's Bringing it all Back Home, and was a favorite of Paul McCartney's, who liked his version of "Blackbird" so much he asked him to perform it when McCartney and Lennon were inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1987.

Big Black established Chicago's Touch & Go Records, Butthole Surfers nearly undid it, and Ted Leo stuck with the indie for far longer than anyone expected. But there's also a whole roster of lesser-known, weirdo, commercially doomed T&G releases that likely contributed to yesterday's announcement that the label's manufacturing and distribution wing will end. That doesn't make them any less excellent. Behold six of our favorites.

Girls Against Boys, House of GVSB (1996)

15 seconds into this video it's painfully clear these guys weren't quite as badass as I'd thought back when I was 18, but growing up basically involves having that realization over and over and over, I suppose. Big fans of The Wet Look and surly, debatably erotic noise-punk, these dudes obviously scan as a wee bit corny nowadays (I can't believe I owned a single with the title "Disco Six Six Six,"), but "Super-Fire" sounded fantastic on my town's one "alternative rock" station, mashed betwixt Smashing Pumpkins and Alanis and whoever else it would traumatize me to now remember. Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby and Cruise Yourself are much much higher regarded generally, bu when I throw on House of GVSB tonight I suspect it will trigger much air-bass nostalgic delight. Bonus points for having the second-best song on the Mallrats soundtrack.

(That GVSB's frontman has a new solo record called Failure American Style is a pretty good indication of how their jump to a major turned out.)--Rob Harvilla

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Today's announcement that Chicago's Touch & Go Records is radically, traumatically downsizing has major implications for indie labels in general: Owner Corey Rusk's official statement, as reported in the Chicago Tribune, lists the labels for whom it will no longer be able to provide manufacturing and distribution: Jade Tree, Drag City, Merge, Kill Rock Stars, Estrus, etc. There aren't enough Arcade Fires available to help soften the blow.

And while most of today's reaction focuses on the label's quarter-century legacy -- Big Black, Jesus Lizard, Slint, TV on the Radio -- it's equally instructive to recall perhaps the most momentous incident in the label's history: Rusk's court battle with the Butthole Surfers, who cut six albums on T&G based on a 50/50 handshake deal the band sought to terminate after jumping to a major and hitting it temporarily big with "Pepper," one of the oddest and least pleasant one-hit-wonder situations of the alt-rock era. Read this 1999 Chicago Reader piece on the battle right now: It's engrossing, heartbreaking stuff (the fucking court decision quotes Yogi Berra), and while T&G's defeat clearly didn't bankrupt the label, it reads as a pretty devastating end of the innocence for Rusk, proof that handshake deals and contracts that overwhelmingly benefited his artists might not be viable after all.

As for the Surfers, well, at least they got a nice award out of it.