It seems like just yesterday that we were posting weekly updates about the new playable songs available for download in the Rock Band store. In actuality, it's been about 21 months since Harmonix stopped its regular DLC updates in April 2013 and over four years since the last retail Rock Band game (though the brand has lived on in titles like the downloadable Rock Band Blitz).

Everything old is new again this week, though, with the surprise announcement that three new Rock Band tracks will be available for download starting Tuesday. The new songs you'll be able to download for $2 each are:

Avenged Sevenfold—"Shepherd of Fire"

Arctic Monkeys—"R U Mine?"

Foo Fighters—"Something from Nothing"

Why add new songs to the 3,500 track Rock Band library so suddenly, after such a long break? "We had an exciting opportunity to add new content to the already-massive Rock Band library with a song from Arctic Monkeys—a band that’s never been in a Rock Band title before!—as well as new music from fan favorites Avenged Sevenfold and Foo Fighters," Harmonix spokesman Nick Chester told Ars in an e-mail. "We couldn’t pass it up. Also, we wanted to see if we could still do it. Turns out we can. It’s sort of like riding a bike."

If this is a sign that weekly content drops are in store for Rock Band going forward once more, Harmonix is keeping mum for now. "Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, one thing at a time!" Chester told us. But there are indications the market for such DLC isn't quite dead. "It’s... important to note that we see hundreds of thousands of unique and active Rock Band users a month still playing the game," Chester pointed out. "This nearly two years after we’ve stopped releasing new content and even longer since we released a retail game."

We may have turned a corner as far as the public's perception of rhythm games is concerned. What had turned into a horribly overexposed genre with a glut of shovelware titles in the late aughts (Rock Revolution, anyone? Band Hero, maybe?) has now sat fallow long enough for a potential, nostalgia-fueled comeback. Note that kids that were in the middle of elementary school when the first Guitar Hero showed up in 2005 are now old enough to be heading to college, and they're probably perfectly primed for another retro-infused bite of the rhythm game apple.

It's not hard to imagine that this latest DLC offering could be Harmonix's way of testing the state of the rhythm gaming waters—Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopolous did say during PAX East in April that there are plans to bring back both Rock Band and Dance Central "in the coming console cycle." There have also been some lightly sourced rumors in recent months that the Guitar Hero brand is prepping for a comeback as well. Now where did I put that old drum controller...?