NEW YORK CITY QUEENS
White Oak Music Hall, January 20
Springing from Kingwood rather than Manhattan, New York City Queens steadily built up one of the area’s more loyal fan bases, which helped the sparkling indie-pop of 2012’s Burn Out Like Roman Candles become one of the decade’s more successful local releases. The group abruptly called it a day after their set at Untapped Fest 2015, and until recently had been coy about whether Friday’s reunion show — which comes on the heels of “Coming Up Daisies,” the single the Queens premiered in October for Free Press Houston — represented mere closure or a new chapter altogether. Last week, though, they announced the show will indeed be "our formal goodbye after an abrupt breakup last year," so come say 'so long' while you still can. With Young Girls and Camera Cult.

WE BELONG: HOUSTONIANS OF MUSLIM DESCENT DISSENT!
Walters Downtown, January 20
We could try to convince you this is a critical show to attend, but can’t do it any better than the event’s organizers did on Facebook. They write, “On January 20, a man takes the highest office in the country who has spent the last year and a half vilifying many groups in this country and around the world. We, as Houston musicians who are Muslim or are from Muslim families, are standing up on this day. This man and the people he surrounds himself with say that us, our families, and many of our friends do not belong in this country and that this country does not belong to us too. He is wrong.” Doubling as a benefit for the ACLU of Texas, the night is more than a show of support, it’s also a killer show, with sets by TURNAWAYS, Ruiners, Revels and Giant Kitty. JESSE SENDEJAS JR.

TERRY ALLEN
Heights Theater, January 21
Somehow the territory around Lubbock, among the flattest plains on the planet, has produced some of the most brilliantly bent minds in Texas music. Even taking into account the Flatlanders and Tommy X Hancock’s crew, Terry Allen especially was born with a creative engine in overdrive, long since spilling past songwriting into sculpture, painting, and sketchwork. Even decades after their original release, his biting, cinematic ‘70s albums Juarez and Lubbock (On Everything) — reissued last year by North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors — continue to cast impossibly long shadows over lesser songwriters who could barely dream of populating their albums with such disagreeable and yet oddly endearing characters.

BENEFIT FOR CHRISTIAN KIDD
Rudyard’s, January 22
For nearly 40 years, the Hates have been the nucleus of Houston's punk scene, and singer Christian Kidd's skyscraping Liberty Spikes its most enduring symbol. Kidd shared many of his more salient stage stories in his 2013 memoir, Just a Houston Punk, and the band was honored with the Local Music Legend award at SLM Buzz's Support Local Music awards show last month. Whenever help is needed from the music community, the Hates are often the first band to sign on for the corresponding benefit show, but now the tables have turned: Kidd is facing surgery to correct a problem with his shoulder, which will sideline the band for the first half of this year. Paying it forward at a special early-evening Sunday show (6-10 p.m.) will be Gut Radio, Screech of Death, Mel Hell & the Texas Mod Crushers, and none other than the Hates themselves, now helping their own cause as they have so many others before. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.