Uncut's latest Ultimate Music Guide is a 148-page special dedicated to the planet-conquering genius of Depeche Mode. From the depths of the NME and Melody Maker archives, we've dug out revealing, hilarious and harrowing interviews with the band, unseen for decades. We've commissioned in-depth new reviews of every Mode album by the best contemporary writers. Oh, and Martin Gore has provided an exclusive introduction. "We're survivors, we're like brothers," he says. That's Depeche Mode: The Ultimate Music Guide - it's a black celebration!

Nick Cave is back with his stunning new album, Push Away The Sky, and what better way to celebrate than with a 148 page special revisiting his incredible music and wild times with the Birthday Party, the Bad Seeds and Grinderman. The Ultimate Music Guide features revealing interviews from the Melody Maker and NME archives alongside amazing photos and in-depth new reviews of all Cave’s albums to tell the complete story behind Cave’s remarkable rise to become one of the most acclaimed songwriters of his generation.

Wake up the nation! Over the past 35 years, Paul Weller has asserted himself, time and time again, as one of the most potent figures in British music: impassioned, tireless, single-minded, brilliant. In the latest Uncut Ultimate Music Guide, we tell Weller's complete story, from the seismic arrival of The Jam, through the inventive subversions of The Style Council, and on to his rich and varied two decades as a solo artist.

Give the people what they want! The 12th Uncut Ultimate Music Guide tells the compelling story of The Kinks! An epic saga of warring brothers, wild concepts, worldwide hits and long sojourns in the wilderness. As usual, we've pored over old copies of NME and Melody Maker to locate revelatory interviews with Ray Davies and his fractious bandmates. Reprinted in full in this Ultimate Music Guide, most of them have been lost for decades. Uncut's current writers, meanwhile, have produced new reviews of every single album in the Kinks' catalogue, uncovering a few long-neglected gems in the process.

The story of Drake as an uncompromising musical visionary is told by Joe Boyd, John Wood, Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Beverley Martyn and more who knew the singer-songwriter.

Robert Plant, Tom Petty, King Crimson and Bobby Womack all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated September 2014 (Take 208) and out tomorrow (July 29). We track Plant, on the cover, from the Welsh Marches to the nightclubs of Paris to hear about bee colonies, mountain lions, altercations with Moroccan traffic cops, Bron-Yr-Aur, Jimmy Page, and Plant's extraordinary new solo album.

This is my last column as editor of Uncut. By the time you read this, in fact, I’ll be gone.

Dolly Parton and Harry Dean Stanton are both in this month's Uncut, a bit of a dream come true. I was scheduled to interview Dolly once myself, at a rodeo in Spokane, which seemed too good to be true.

We've got reviews in this issue of two Wreckless Eric albums that you may have missed when they were originally released, and which are now being re-released to coincide with Eric's 60th birthday in May,

The feature on William Burroughs in this month's issue by John Robinson made me think of some of the bands who took their names from Burroughs' books, most famously The Soft Machine, Steely Dan, and Grant Hart's Nova Mob