Thank you Jason!
Just for the benefit of others who might be trying to do this with PowerCMSBuilder News Items where you use a page as a template;
Query
 SELECT Date_format(pcms2_contents.ContentDate, '%M, %Y') as contDate,
  SELECT Date_format(pcms2_contents.ContentDate, '%M, %Y') as contDate,  COUNT(*) AS cc FROM pcms2_contents
WHERE pcms2_contents.ContentPageName='News' AND pcms2_contents.ContentPageSetParentID=12
GROUP BY YEAR(pcms2_contents.ContentDate),
MONTH(pcms2_contents.ContentDate)
ORDER BY pcms2_contents.ContentDate DESC

Displayed using;
<?php
    // RepeatSelectionCounter_1 Begin Loop
    $RepeatSelectionCounter_1_IterationsRemaining = $RepeatSelectionCounter_1_Iterations;
    while($RepeatSelectionCounter_1_IterationsRemaining--){
        if($RepeatSelectionCounterBasedLooping_1 || $row_Recordset1){
?>
<?php echo $row_Recordset1['contDate']; ?> (<?php echo $row_Recordset1['cc']; ?>)<br/>
<?php
    } // RepeatSelectionCounter_1 Begin Alternate Content
    else{
?>
<?php } // RepeatSelectionCounter_1 End Alternate Content
        if(!$RepeatSelectionCounterBasedLooping_1 && $RepeatSelectionCounter_1_IterationsRemaining != 0){
            if(!$row_Recordset1 && $RepeatSelectionCounter_1_Iterations == -1){$RepeatSelectionCounter_1_IterationsRemaining = 0;}
            $row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($Recordset1);
        }
        $RepeatSelectionCounter_1++;
    } // RepeatSelectionCounter_1 End Loop
?>
 















