Are you shopping for a New Year's Eve party with music that's more than just background noise? There are plenty of choices for music-loving revelers this year. Here are some of the many choices (arranged in order of preference):

Bob Mould : The cofounding guitarist, singer, songwriter in Husker Du presaged Nirvana, Foo Fighters and a host of similarly inclined noise-pop-rock bands the last 20 years. Now he's back in full roar with a power trio that includes drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy showing the kids how it's done on two magnificent recent albums, "Silver Age" (2012) and this year's "Beauty & Ruin." If you saw his show in Millennium Park over the summer, you know this show will rage. 9 p.m. Wednesday at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St., $51 and $61; metrochicago.com

Windy City Soul Club : Yes, there will be dancing and lots of it when this DJ collective pulls out gem after gem from crates brimming with vintage soul, funk and R&B. 9 p.m. Wednesday at Logan Square Auditorium,...

Rob Miller and Nan Warshaw presaged "alternative country" and have now outlived it. The duo, who co-founded Bloodshot Records with Eric Babcock 20 years ago, took it one album at a time when they started out, and more than 200 albums later, they still do.

"It would be presumptuous to call it a business plan," Warshaw says of the label that started with a list of bands scrawled on a cocktail napkin.

"If we had set it all up in a conference room instead of a bar like we did, Miller adds, "it probably would've been a lot less successful."

The idea was to document "the underground of the underground," a scene in the shadow of nationally renowned acts emerging from Chicago at the time such as Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair. But the napkin bands had a sound and sensibility, a blend of punk and garage-rock with country and roots earthiness. Bloodshot debuted in 1994 with the compilation "Insurgent Country, Vol.1: For a Life of Sin," which included artists such as the Mekons' Jon Langford,...

Time for Turn It Up's annual look at the best albums from Chicago's independent music scene. Here are my 10 favorite local indie releases for 2014:

1. Twin Peaks, "Wild Onion" (Grand Jury) : Two years ago, they were another promising garage-rock band from a scene brimming with overtaxed amplifiers and homemade demos. But the quartet's ambitions have expanded greatly since its well-received 2012 debut, and the follow-up flows across genre and mood without sanding down Twin Peaks' edges. The baroque pop of "Ordinary People" and "Mirror of Time," the trippy harmonies of the dreamlike "Strange World" and the melancholy pop of "Telephone" show a vulnerability that balances the glam-rock strut of "Strawberry Smoothie" and the punky thrust of "Fade Away." Even with three songwriters sharing the vocals, the album boasts a cohesion and depth that belies the relative youth of Cadien Lake James, Clay Frankel, Jack Dolan and Connor Brodner, the old man in the group, who turned 21 in October. (7 p.m...

“Shut your mouth off and focus on what you feel inside,” D’Angelo sings at the outset of his third album, “Black Messiah” (RCA), which arrived unexpectedly this week. He heeds his own advice, with his vocals often buried, distorted or murmured as much as sung on his first full-length studio release since 2000. He sings beautifully, often in falsetto, but just as often his voice is another instrument, a texture, a series of tones that blends with a musical landscape of shadows and rhythm.

When last heard from on “Voodoo,” the then-25-year-old artist escaped the relatively safe cocoon of the neo-soul movement he helped launch five years earlier. Instead of soul traditionalism with a twist, “Voodoo” plunged into murkier, riskier waters. It offered a new take on funk: angry but subtle, raw but sensual, black-lit but hypnotic. It was an album that hovered like smoke, that rippled from the ground up. To some, it sounded alien and forbidding, lacking the readily discernible hooks that had...

Divine Styler's first album in 14 years qualifies as an event for hip-hop connoisseurs, a rare sighting of an MC with a reputation built on absence as much as the genre-busting inventiveness of his music.

"Def Mask" (Gamma Proforma) builds on the sci-fi elements that informed his previous full-length, "Wordpower Vol. 2: Directrix," released way back in the 20th Century. "Def Mask" (Gamma Proforma) is not so much Afro-futuristic in the tradition of George Clinton or Sun Ra as a dystopian metaphor for what Divine Styler sees as the failings of today's culture, with nods toward Philip K. Dick, "Blade Runner" and "The Manchurian Candidate" – novelistic in theme and cinematic in sound.

"Images on a Screen" sets an ominous tone: devoid of beats, a whir of distant machines, the sound of laughter from a schoolyard or playground. Android voices describe a virtual reality. "When you discover who you really are … you are indestructible, you are free." But how? The whole game's a trap. The...

For the last 12 Years, Heather Whinna, Steve Albini and a few friends — including Jeff Tweedy, Fred Armisen and Second City alumni — have devoted part of their Christmas Day playing Santa Claus in some of Chicago's most destitute neighborhoods. They've delivered more than $1 million in cash and gifts to the needy.

Whinna, Second City manager, has steered the annual "The Second City That Never Sleeps" 24-hour marathon since its second year. It brings together bands and comics to raise money for struggling families. The lineup for this year's all-nighter Tuesday at the Second City e.t.c. Theatre includes Tweedy, Albini, Armisen, Kim Deal, Robbie Fulks and Second City cast members. A companion event, Our Living Room Show, will be staged Jan. 5 in the UP Comedy Club with performances by Tweedy and cast members from Saturday Night Live and Second City.

From $50,000 to $100,000 has been raised annually, and the beneficiaries are letter-writers: kids, mothers and other family members reaching...