I think that the most celebrated result in this direction is Shelah's famous work on Whitehead's Problem:
Is every abelian group $A$ such that $Ext^1(A, \mathbb{Z})=0$ free?
This is known to be indepedent of ZFC (cf. Shelah, Whitehead groups may not be free, even assuming CH I and II), and it seems that there is an interesting connection between certain questions of ZFC and abelian group theory (cf. Eklof The affinity of set theory and abelian group theory).
Another famous work relating algebra and 'higher' set theory is B. L. Osofsky Homological dimension and the continuum hypothesis and subsequent works.
Independence results, Martin's axiom, Continuum Hypothesis and large cardinal axioms have proven to be interesting to 'pratical' questions in many areas of mathematics (point-set topology, functional analysis, order theory, etc).
Is there any current research trend in using sistematically Independence results and other aspects of 'higher' set theory to understand problems of algebra, such as in the above mentioned mathematical disciplines?