IF THE RESURGENCE in popularity of old-school vinyl records has taught us anything, it’s that everything old will, at some point, become new again — and that nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And now that vinyl albums are outselling CDs for the first time in several decades, it only makes sense that we would turn our attention to another bygone listening format: the cassette.

In the past few years, cassette collecting has grown from a niche hobby into a funky new business model, with record labels once again releasing music on cassette as well as on vinyl, and a handful of labels now doing cassette-only releases. If you still prowl the aisles of record stores (or your local Urban Outfitters), you might see newly hatched cassette sections. And if you are a person with a fondness for cassettes — or a romantic (like me), who has held on to all those mixtapes made for you by your junior-high paramours or the road-trip mixes you made before long drives — this is your time. This also means that there is suddenly a glut of brand-new Walkmans, boomboxes, and retro cassette players (Remember the clear ones? They’re back!) that look just like the one you might have had in high school.

For those looking to take their love of cassettes to the next level, We Are Rewind’s new “reinvented” cassette player is a deeply satisfying investment. Designed to channel the spiritual blueprint of the first Sony Walkman, which was originally released in 1979, this sleek, portable player comes in three different colors — orange, blue, and gray — and boasts a chic, minimalist aluminum exterior. Even though it vaguely resembles a brutalist art object from the ’70s, this player is packed with a variety of contemporary bells and whistles. Not only is it rechargeable via any USB port, it also offers integrated Bluetooth functionality as well as a 3.5-mm jack connector (for either speakers or your favorite wired headphones) and recording functionality that will allow you to make your own mixtapes from other media. It also happens to sound incredible, even if you are using it to play some beaten-up DJ mixes that may or may not have spent the better part of the ’90s floating around the floorboard of your car.

Whether you are a high-minded audiophile, a design purist, or just someone who wants to dig out all those tapes that have been gathering dust in your closet, We Are Rewind’s cassette player not only ticks all the boxes but also feels like a nice alternative to the streamy music that most people currently consume. Rather than cherry-picking songs you want to hear out of the digital ether, listening to a cassette provides a satisfying, analog experience. It requires you to make a deliberate choice, and it encourages you to surrender to the experience, letting the music play through rather than skipping to the next track. For those of us who grew up listening to music this way, the familiar rattle of sliding a tape into the player and the satisfying click of pressing play are enough to elicit an almost Pavlovian response of joy.