This weekend there is an alternative to the same party you have been sitting at for the last month, but only if you are bold enough to step out of the mainstream.

The Onion Creek Cloggers and Band will host the Decorah-based Foot-Notes for an evening of traditional Scandinavian-American music and dancing this weekend.

Traditional Scandinavian-American music consists of polkas, waltzes, two-steps and schottisches, band leader Beth Hoven-Rotto said.

She added that even if participants have two left feet, the band members will be teaching steps — or they have the option of just enjoying the music.

The Foot-Notes — Hoven Rotto, fiddle; Jon Rotto, guitar; Jim Skurdal, mandolin and Bill Musser, bass — formed in 1991, playing for monthly schoolhouse dances known as Highlandville Dances, a tradition that began with another old-time band in 1975.

The Foot-Notes have also played at the 1996 Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife in Washington D.C. and at the 1996 Festival of Iowa Folklife in Des Moines.

“The invitation to perform at the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife is the ultimate compliment to their musical and historical authenticity,” LeRoy Larsen, host of the “Scandinavian Cultural Hour” on KFAI in Minneapolis, Minn., said in a Foot-Notes review.

Playing Scandinavian music has personal meaning for the band because each member is Norwegian-American. “I play because it’s a part of my heritage,” Skurdal said.

Musser, who grew up in Spring Grove, Minn., a Norwegian-American community, said he plays to continue traditions. “This is very much the music of my ancestors,” he said.

Though Hoven-Rotto said her heritage makes playing traditional music special, she also said, “You don’t need to be Norwegian to enjoy the music.”

During the band members’ time together, they have recorded three albums: “First Steps,” “Highlandville Dance” and “Decorah Waltz.”

A new record is also underway — “My Father was a Fiddler” — and is scheduled to come out on May 17, Norwegian Constitution Day.

“It’s a historical CD, and it’s very focused on local music,” Musser said.

Although “Decorah Waltz” included original, contemporary and traditional pieces, “My Father was a Fiddler” differs in another way, Musser added.

Nearly every song on the album was composed in the Decorah area between 1890 and 1930 and its historical focus separates it from the previous ones, Musser said.

“It relates to us more personally than other recordings we’ve done,” Hoven-Rotto said. The songs have connections to fiddlers the band knows.

The Onion Creek Cloggers will host the Decorah-based Foot-Notes Saturday at the Unitarian Fellowship with a potluck at 6 p.m. and dancing at 7:30 p.m.