Unless there's an impending apocalypse circled on a specific date, New Year's Eve is the best night each year to pick from a wide array of concerts. As you and your crew (responsibly) enjoy cheap champagne and over-priced appetizers, live tunes are the perfect back-drop for a tearful or cheerful farewell to the year that was.

Locally, there are plenty of massive parties featuring live music. Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth has the head-scratchingly popular Casey Donahew Band, while the annual Lights All Night shindig will be thumping with dub-step and house music in downtown Dallas. For sheer revelry, those options might suffice, but for those who want the music-to-party ratio to be a bit more even, here are four shows that will help bring 2012 to a joyous close.

Jonathan Tyler & Northern Lights and Somebody's Darling at the Granada Theater
With the addition of Fort Worth's boogie-riffic Quaker City Night Hawks to this already southern-rocking bill, the Granada will be guitar-hero central on NYE in Dallas. Somebody's Darling is on a crazy roll right now, thanks to their stellar new record, Jank City Shakedown.

The Granada Theater has long since established itself as perhaps the premiere venue in town, but its new next door neighbor, the Sundowner, has made the act of hitting a great bar (with excellent local brews and bites) before a concert easier and more enjoyable than it's been in town for a long time.

Big Freedia at Dada
It's tough to find an artist who blends pure party-starting and musical performance as well as New Orleans "Queen of Bounce." The always active troop of booty-shakers that join her is as key to a Freedia show as her tight-as-hell tunes and rhymes are.

In the last couple of years, Big Freedia has commanded huge crowds at 35 Denton and at Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest. Put her and her crew in the more intimate confines of Dada, and there will be more ass-shaking per square foot than anywhere in the world, once midnight hits in Deep Ellum.

Daniel Hart and Skeleton Coast at Where House
Hart's 2012 release, The Orientalist, has been named as either the top, or one of the best, releases from a local artist by more than a few folks. The violinist and indie songwriter has certainly given the Dallas area a new dimension to enjoy outside of the standard indie or synth-driven acts that seem to dominate the local scene at times.

As the venue's name implies, the industrial setting, and local acts make this concert one where the focus lies solely on the bands playing. It happens to be December 31st, but great talent in a ramshackle setting is business as usual for the Where House.

Hayes Carll and Corb Lund at House of Blues
This show is being billed as a "Burlesque Circus and Sideshow," and it's not unlikely that hilarity and all sorts of oddities will be present. Carll, a Texas guy, and Lund, a cowboy singer from Canada, both have razor wits and sharper song-writing skills.

For a decade now, critics have tried to lump Carll in with the earnest songwriting legends of this state such as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard. And there's something to those comparisons, but only to a limited point.

Carll has created an identity all his own as he's released stellar album after stellar album, with KMAG YOYO being his most recent record to garner considerable acclaim. Laughs, booze and music will all play a major role at the House of Blues on NYE, perhaps in that order.